Quackless Ducks

And a Desperate Plea for Crowless Roosters

By A. C. R.

SOMEONE, either by accident or de sign, has evolved the quackless duck.

There are many speciments of this satisfying breed of water fowl in Tahiti.

He tries valiantly to emulate his noisy ancestor: stretching his neck, opening his spoon-like beak to its widest extent, and contracting his thorax in a mighty effort; but all that emanates is a wheezy hiss.

This achievement envisions the bringing to pass of a transmutation vastly more vital to the peace and serenity of a har assed humanity—the crowless rooster.

The roosters of Tahiti, like Rostand’s chantjcleer, crow not only to cause the rising of the sun. but to keep it steadily in its course throughout the day. By night, they awake at stated occasions to regulate the procession of the constellations.

As stations for these fanfares, they in variably choose the vicinity of our resi dence or, at night, the trees adjacent to the windows of our sleeping quarters. Were they numbered among our possessions, we might find consolation for our irritated nerves and compensation for our violated

slumbers in the prospect of the smoking forms of these disturbers of our tran quility one day gracing our table. But they are not.

What we lack is, however, supplied in abundance by our neighbours; and, for some reason known only to those myster ious and malignant forces that cunningly contrive instruments to plague humanity, all the chickens of our neighborhood have chosen our demesne as their happy hunt ing ground. Each morning, before the sun has risen, the roosters and their retinues enter from all points of the compass: sounding their approach like trumpeters and heralds inducting pageants to the jousting arena of Camelot—and we are awakened to another day of fury and exasperation.

The Tahiti hens are scarcely less noisy than their consorts. From mom ’til eve— like many people we know—they keep up a continual clatter of gossip, back biting and criticism of each others’ fea thers.

We have essayed every method our in genuity could invent to abate the nuisance.

Dogs were trained to chase crowing cocks —they all died of exhaustion; fire crackers and Roman candles: Chinese gongs and missiles.

The last has resulted in the denting or fracture of everything movable in our possession. Our aim is poor and we have never hit anything; thereby preserving ourselves in the state of love and charity with our neighbors who own the fowl. All that ever happens is the noisy scattering of indignant hens who, within five minutes have returned to hold a council of delib eration to determine if the object is edible, while a massed choir of cocks send up a sevenfold Hallelujah in mockery of our efforts.

Theocritus, Virgil and countless poets, through the centuries since their time, have sung the praises of the calm ser enity of bucolic life. None of them had ever encountered the domestic fowl—male nnd female—of Tahiti. Were they to day residents of our island they would be composing sonorous hexameters of petition to omthologists. bird fanciers and biologists to emulate the creator of the quackless duck by evolving the crowless rooster and the cackleless hen.

He who achieves this miracle of science will merit ribands, orders, titles of nobilitv and his bronze bust in all the Halls of Fame; for he will be a benefactor of the nremier class, worthy of the homage of his fellow men.