Nibble

Re: Of Mice and Men... and a Duck

In the last few weeks I've been getting a new visitor to the offices here at HighView Farm, where we publish STORAGEsearch. He's quite friendly, and comes from the cowboy town, built by my neighbor Roy, which is a short walk up the road. If you've ever been to Old Tucson, in Arizona, you'll have a pretty good idea of what I mean. Roy has a main street with a bunch of wild west style buildings, which he built as a hobby, maybe twenty years ago. He's seventy, now, and because of the gun laws we have in this area (related to hand guns) he no longer does shoot outs, but as I found out some years ago, when it rained during a bonfire party, the buildings are fully functional. You can go in and keep warm and dry if it rains.

My new visitor's name is Donald, and yes, he is a duck. He's taken to walking down the road to make friends with the geese and chickens we keep here. I noticed one morning that Donald had actually stayed the night, and got a bit worried, because standing outside the chicken house is not a safe place to be when the local foxes come visiting. That's when I decided that at the end of each day, I would walk him back home.

Although the road here is quiet during most of the day, because it doesn't actually lead anywhere, it does get quite busy in the early evening as our neighbors come racing back from the various places they commute to work. Although Donald would have no difficulty finding his own way home, once I walked him as far as our gate, I was worried that having a low profile, he wouldn't be seen in time by most drivers coming around the bend, and might end up as flat as some of those pancakes you get served when eating crispy roast duck, Peking style. I figured that walking behind him until he was safely home, would ensure that any maniac drivers would see the tall figure (me), and therefore stop, long before they saw the short profile (Donald) too late.

Sure enough the first time I tried this theory, a car came screeching to a halt. I could see from the driver's expression that he was not impressed by my walking up the middle of the road like a lunatic. He wound down his window and was about to say something for the benefit of my education, when he saw the duck. Donald by this time, had safely reached home.

"I was escorting the duck" I explained.

"He's a drake" explained the driver.

"How can you tell?" I asked.

"I used to keep them, and chickens too, until the foxes ate them."

So started a friendly conversation with a neighbor whom I had seen in passing for several years but never before spoken to. He went on to offer his services to stand watch by our chicken shed any time I wanted and blow away any intruding fox with his shotgun, which kind offer I accepted, although I suggested he should probably wait until the weather improved, because sitting in the rain is not much fun.

The point of the story is this. As you probably know, people living in the south of England, where we are based, have the reputation of being a cold unfriendly lot, and this reputation is based in fact. But it's also true, that perfect strangers will come up to you, and talk to you, no matter how scary your appearance, if you are taking your dog for a walk, or, in my case, if you have brought their car to a screeching halt while escorting a duck.

It's the same with this web site STORAGEsearch. Readers who would never dream of contacting our more formally designed SPARC Product Directory don't feel intimidated by contacting Megabyte@STORAGEsearch.com and over the years we've had thousands of very useful pointers to what we're doing wrong, and how we could improve things.

There are also some sound marketing reasons why we use mice on this web site, and if you're interested you can see where those ideas came from. And if you ever studied biology, and wondered about the anatomical correctness of Megabyte etc... you would be right in thinking that his tail is modelled on another type of rodent which occasionally comes to visit the chicken shed at night.

PS - in case you were wondering, we don't eat the HighView Farm chickens or geese. If you look at what they cost to run, it's actually cheaper to eat factory farmed chicken in a restaurant. But it is fun watching them, and the exercise of letting them out, feeding them etc is healthier than sitting at a desk all day long.

See also:- Factsheet for the John Steinbeck novel - Of Mice and Men