Quack

This morning, while walking my dog, I saw, as is my wont, a pair of ducks. They were the typical ducks we see around here a lot, called, apparently, mallard ducks.


This picture was realized by Richard Bartz by using a Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

But they were accompanied by a larger fowl. At first I thought it was a bigger duck, from the way it waddled (if it walks like a duck, etc.) and shook its tail, but when I saw its face with red skin surrounding the eyes, and its mottled gray feathers, I though maybe it was some kind of turkey or chicken that had escaped somebody's keeping. I could not see its feet because it was in the grass of someone's lawn.

When I was came by the birds on my way back home, they were in the street (fortunately a quiet, low-traffic residential area), and I saw that the big one had webbed feet. Later in the day, when I had time, I looked online to try to identify it and decided it must have been a type of Muscovy duck. The picture below shows the kind of face it had, although the one I saw had a more dappled gray feather pattern.


CC-BY-2.5 / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

In other news, I took my dog to the groomer for a hair cut. He went in shaggy and came out smooth and short-haired. Visually, he shrank in size. What had appeared to be his bulk turned out to have been fuzz.

While he was having his makeover, I went to Bakerview Nursery and picked out a small dieffenbachia and some creeping fig, along with a ceramic pot to plant them in. I plan to take the pot to work and adorn my work space.