Winter is edging closer and this fella is still hanging out at the beaver pond. His lady friend moved on sometime earlier in the week and now he is all alone, apparently uninformed about the migration thing.

The past few times I've driven by he has been in the middle of the pond, butt-up, feeding underwater. Perfect photo op if there ever was one. This morning, after one such drive-by, I went home, grabbed the camera, tripod, long lens, and walked back to the pond.

When we got there the duck fled to the far side of the water while I set up the tripod and camera. Zeke found a comfortable spot to lay down and we waited. We are patient. Surely the duck would come to investigate. After all this is the duck that walked right up to the dog and I two weeks ago. (we weren't very social)

No such luck. It quacked, chirped, swam, preened, splashed, quacked, preened, and then fell asleep. He sleeps on one leg but it's not a simple matter of landing gear retraction. The leg must be stretched and wiggled just so, with pauses to scratch whatever it is which tickles a duck.

Faith and I once had an argument discussion about a one legged duck. We were staying in Weggis, Switzerland and the duck was in a little zoo on the edge of Lake Luzern. Faith tried to get it through my dense head that it was sleeping with the other leg tucked away. I tried to convince her that it lost the leg in an embarrassing altercation and was self conscious about Faith focusing on it so.

Thousands of miles from home in a beautiful setting and yet we kept wandering back over to check on the duck. Eventually we came back to find a two legged duck strutting about. Of course, we never *saw* the leg come down. For that matter it could have been a clever Swiss prothesis, wound up once a week by the caretaker.

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