Enslaved by Ducks Read Online Free PDF Page B

an impressive leap onto a board and enough residual momentum to launch himself over the fence. In the end, I had no choice but to add a third level of fencing, bringing the total height to an insurmountable six feet.
    “That’s one pen he won’t get out of,” I bragged to Linda, after depositing Binky in his newly refurbished stockade. Fifteen minutes later, I was upstairs trolling for African music on my shortwave radio when Linda called to me.
    “Sweetie, I don’t see Binky.”
    “Don’t worry,” I hollered down to her. “He’s in there.”
    “I sure don’t see him.”
    Surveying his pen from the upstairs window, I couldn’t see him either. He was usually a blur of motion as he busied himself with an escape attempt, but the cage was calm and apparently quite empty.
    Linda bolted out the front door in hopes of intercepting him before he hopped out into our busy street or lodged himself under one of our cars. I ran out the side door and nearly tripped over him as I went down the outside steps. He was sitting on the second step licking himself with unusual gusto, as triumphant as Houdini at the completion of a spectacular feat. “Running away isn’t the object,”Binky’s presence at the door told me. “Escaping from your stupid pen is the point.” How had he pulled it off? I’d never paid any attention to the numerous holes Binky had excavated while out in the yard. He would dig down a foot or so, then immediately abandon his burrow to start another one. But never before had he extended a hole into a bona fide tunnel.
    “I wonder how long he was working on this?” Linda marveled, as we surveyed the exit hole that had popped up through the grass a couple of feet from the northeast corner of his pen. His ingenuity forced me to line the inside perimeter of his cage with rocks of a weight that would thwart any more escape hatches.
    “This is our last rabbit,” I subsequently told Linda. “They don’t make good pets.”
    “There’s nothing wrong with Binky.”
    “He belongs in the barn,” I fumed.
    “You shouldn’t talk about Binky like that,” Linda said. “He’s crazy about you.”
    In fact, Binky had begun to exhibit one or two endearing characteristics. Often when I puttered around in my upstairs office, he would sit on the floor beside my chair and groom himself, happy as long as neither of us acknowledged the other’s presence. Sometimes when I came home from work, I’d find him upstairs under my desk, apparently waiting for me. I experienced a small but unmistakable flinch of pleasure at seeing him, and if I approached him on hands and knees, pretending to be searching for a mechanical pencil that had jumped out of my pocket, he’d even tolerate a few light strokes of my fingers.
    We marveled at his brashness with our cat, Penny, whom we had brought home as a companion for him. Though Penny did play a little roughly once she had outgrown the kitten stage, Binky could give as good as he got. Head bent low, he would grunt and launcha rhinoceros charge at her, forcing her to leap to the top of the couch for safety. They were especially rambunctious in the morning, waking us by bounding onto the bed in pursuit of one another. Even without Penny, Binky had begun greeting us by jumping on the bed, scampering across our legs, then immediately returning to the floor. From any other animal, these morning leaps would have served as mere footnotes—and leg notes. From Binky they were a veritable declaration of love.
    As the first week of May rolled around, however, he failed to act as our alarm clock. He kept to himself in a corner, displaying unusual listlessness. His appetite was poor. When I would carry him back to his cage, he didn’t fight me. We knew he had to be sick, but didn’t realize that rabbits often show symptoms of illness only once it has advanced too far to easily treat. One morning his condition had obviously worsened. He barely moved at all. Linda hurried Binky to the