It can’t be TOO hard- being a duck that is. My stomach growled watching a tot feeding a duck in the castle garden, then my famished gears started turning. Right. That’d be nice- I could go for some bread and a swim. Ducks don’t even have to work for food- not these ducks -they get fed. I have to shop for bread, and that’s not the half of it. First I have to get to the bread, which means risking it in my tired van or sitting on a bus with a perfect smelly stranger or pushing my luck crossing a bustling street. And then, if I’m not way-laid…BREAD! But I can’t just stuff it down my gullet, and sure as day nobody’s gonna feed it to me. The worst that can happen to a duck eating bread is getting its head wet…or choking on fruitcake. Just when I was feeling particularly underprivileged on the food chain, I thought of my great grandfather and his wooden decoy duck bobs still sitting on my hearth back in Indiana, and I thought of the dogs he used to chase the felled birds and I thought of the bullets and the sharp October air, and the teeth, and I felt silly.