My mother, my sister and I had moved together into a small one-room house. I stood in the little room, noticing a bed, but not much else. I walked over to a window to look outside, but being unable to see anything, I walked to the front door and stepped out. Once outside I could see the house was little more than a shack in a neighborhood of similar shacks. Something else: our house was actually divided in half. It looked as if an adobe wall had been built right down the middle of the house, dividing what had been one large room into two smaller rooms. Apparently someone else was living in the other half of the house; who might it be? It occurred to me that if a woman was living on the other side, at night I might be able to look through her window and see her.
As I looked around the yard, my attention was drawn to a box sitting on the ground. Peering into the box, I was surprised to see several dark-brown birds frenetically fluttering around inside the box. The birds were carrying mud into the box and constructing nests out of the mud. They were working so quickly, they soon completed their nests and disappeared inside them – except for one small brown bird, which lay limp on the bottom of the box. As I looked more carefully at the bird, I realized it was a baby duck. I surmised that the brown birds had somehow scooped up the duck when the birds had been gathering the mud, and had brought it there by mistake.
Realizing the baby duck, covered with mud, was in need of help, I reached into the box and picked it up. With the duck in my hand, I headed back to the house, walked inside and stepped up to a sink in the room. I began trying to wash the mud from the duck; but in the process, I managed to let the duck slip from my hand and down the drain. As I frantically began trying to retrieve the duck, I called out to my sister to come and help me. I pulled the duck out twice, without my sister's help, but each time I dropped it back into the drain. Finally however I managed to pull it out and hold it in my hand. However, by now the water had shrunk the little duck till it was almost as thin as a feather. I told my sister to get me a hair dryer, which she did, and with the dryer I began trying to dry out the duck. I held the dryer rather far away from the duck, because I didn't want to burn it. But as I continued to dry the duck with the dryer, I noticed the form of the duck beginning to change, until soon it looked like a fat, healthy caterpillar about five centimeters long. As it began moving around, I thought I needed to find some lettuce or something to feed it so it would be healthy. It looked as if it were going to be all right. It simply was no longer a duck, but a caterpillar.
Copyright 2003 by luciddreamer2k@gmail.com
