The Tame Ones

Chapter 1

"Quack, Quack, Quack!"
"Do you always have to do that?" asked Henry, the handsome drake mallard. It was just now dawn and everyone except Baxter was sound asleep.
"Yes, as a matter of fact I do," proclaimed Baxter, who was the oldest and wisest of the flock. "It's time to wake up and you've slept way past usual time." At this time Betty, the youngest of the three, was just beginning to wake up to the usual morning arguments.
"Well I think it's about time you stop killing our mornings with that rude awakening," shouted Henry
"Will you two please just stop bickering for a change?" pleaded Betty. She really never liked it when they fought, but then again she almost never tried to stop them.
"Oh, all right," said Henry. "I'll stop." Baxter and Henry smiled at each other with uneasiness.
"Okay everyone, since we're all up, I say it's about time we get some breakfast," said Baxter. They all replied in unison, but Betty felt an unfamiliar pair of eyes watching her.
"Is everything OK Betty?" Henry asked .
"Well, I feel as though I'm being watched," replied Betty.
Henry looked around the whole pond twice, maybe even three times, before he noticed what Betty had felt was watching her. By this time Baxter was swimming over, with a perch in his mouth, to see what was going on. When he reached them he just looked at their eyes and then where they were aimed in horror. They all gasped at the terrible thing set before them.
"Go ask it was it is," whispered Henry to Betty.
"Okay, but if he eats me then both of you swim as fast as you can to the other side of the pond," she said shakily to the two of them.
Slowly, she worked her way towards that thing that was just standing there like a statue. When she got as close as her legs would let her she tried as hard as she could to speak with confidence.
"Umm who or what are you," was all she could say.
"Well I am George, a crane, and although I know what you are, who are you?"
"I'm Betty and that is my brother and father behind those rocks."
When he saw the two ducks quivering in the water he laughed to himself.