You Can’t Judge A Book

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If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a duck, then it’s probably a duck.

Unless it’s a grooble.

Back on the evolutionary route, choices were made at each fork. Some lizards became birds, then some birds became ducks. At this very last fork the lesser-spotted grooble took the road less travelled.

Evolution tried to give the grooble a fighting chance, so it gave it slightly darker feathers than a duck, a higher-pitched quack and the ability to swim the breaststroke. Evolution also made it taste like snot-flavoured sprouts (in other words, like sprouts), but you don’t find this out, of course, until you have cooked and taken a bite out of one, which is a bit too late for the grooble.

Because they do still look sufficiently like their cousins to be shot at. In this they are unfortunate in their looks, though not as unfortunate as the even-lesser-spotted gonquin, a giant snail which looks like a blueberry muffin.

Duck-hunting is carried out by the kind of person who thinks that the more shotgun pellets you can put into a bird the better it will taste. They are the kind of person who thinks that you can sneak up on a duck if you wade though water with loud splashy wellies, a snuffling dog and a thing that sounds like a kazoo.

This type of person is not likely to spot nuances in plumage.

It’s not all bad news, though. If the hunter is a bad shot, then the grooble will be merely wounded. This may sound like a bad thing, but once they’ve healed they can look forward to a far more interesting love life.

As we all know, chicks dig scars.

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This was written for Sidey’s Weekly Theme, which is “illusion”, which isn’t exactly what this is about, but it’s close…