The Ducksect
A photo of a close up of some dark brown tree bark. There is a large hole in the centre, in front of which is a cobweb, a part of which is in the shape of a duck.
This is the lair of the rare Ducksect. The Ducksect first emerged as a distinct being in 347BCE and currently lives in Alice Holt Forest. It told me that it also has a cousin on its mother’s side in the New Forest, so I will have to venture there one of these days and try to solicit an interview. Ducksect said it’d happily put in a good word for a highly reputable publication such as mine.
The Ducksect is a pirate and that’s why it flies its flagweb outside its lair. Its voyages on the sea started from a young age, and are, sadly, rooted in tragedy…
You see, the Ducksect is the product of an unholy but loving union between a duck and a form of insect sadly extinct but which might be considered a form of beetle. Both beings were egg layers and madly in love and so felt no shame in romancing and procreating. Sadly, all but one egg was unfertilised, and when the Ducksect was finally born, no amount of love and affection from its parents could make up for the ostracism it received in the ponds, puddles, and bogs of the forest.
Eventually the Ducksect decided it had had enough, and left home to seek out new and exciting adventures in the hopes of finding more open-minded communities of forest dwellers. It took a long time, but eventually it did; such is the way of a hero’s adventure.
First though, it sailed the Atlantic on a branch of oak it had made a miniature dug-out with. It then crossed the Sahara with a scarab beetle who proclaimed the Ducksect’s unusual appearance (a mohawk of feathers down its back) a good and virtuous omen. That sandy journey took quite a long time due to their little legs, so the Ducksect next took a century of respite inside a rock which would eventually become a church at Lalibela. Then our intrepid explorer marched across Anatolia, stopping for some time to meditate and learn poetry with Rumi. Eventually, it arrived in Yazd, took up residence in a wind catcher and listened to their songs. After a while it got a crook in his neck from all that AC, so it went up to Mongolia and stole milk from a nomad. Finally, it crossed over to Russia and saved a captive brown bear, who then carried it over the Bering Strait and into north America.
Down, down, down the continent our bold and brave Ducksect went until it finally wound up in Argentina in 1587, just in time for the cattle. Well, not the cows, but the poop the cattle would pump out. This proved to be fortuitous timing for two reasons: 1) the nourishment after centuries of inappropriate eating; and 2) the Ducksect’s arrival pretty much coincided with the cows. This meant that the local dung eaters accepted the Ducksect as a god brought by their beneficent poopers.
After all these years, our Ducksect finally had a home, a community, a place of abundance! It settled down to a nice life and even thought that maybe it could marry itself to a nice Argentinian beetle or duck. But then one day, it heard a message on the wind (this was a trick Rumi had taught it) and knew it had to get back home. So another dug-out was made this time with a trailer stuffed full of poop, and eventually our Ducksect arrived, tired but cleansed, back home in Alice Holt forest.
Once it had found a nice hole to settle into, our Ducksect hoisted its trusty flag and opened up a school for the wayward children of the forest. To each of these outliers, it taught the skill of developing your own adventures in lieu of societal approval. The most important thing it teaches, is that if you feel you must do something, do it you must. Even if there are no discernible ripples of change from your actions, the Ducksect’s important message is to carry on regardless. The Ducksect has learnt that sometimes the ripples are actually inside of you, and not the world outwith. As such, they will manifest with a great and wondrous power at some richly rewarding point in your future.
So there we have it. Another piece of edifying nature reportage from your trusted nature reporter with a double degree in Veracity. I do hope that you will take the Ducksect’s words to heart and keep on doing the things you feel you must, irrespective of whether or not the world has eyes to see or ears to hear. Deep down in your soul-hole, future you is busy thanking you for everything you have ever done. Don’t disappoint them, okay?
Listen to me read this story: