I'm hot. It's sweltering outside...water mirages on the asphalt and zinnias wilting kind of hot. I've been drinking a quart of iced tea everyday and eating boxes of popsicles for breakfast. Boxes.

My brain is dead and I can't seem to think about anything revolutionary or heart wrenching to write. So I will talk about my duck.

I have a pet duck. His name is Howie. Officially, his name is Howard (get it? Howard the Duck? Oooh....) but Howie is much more fitting for his demeanor.

Yes, my duck has a demeanor.

Howie is a very special breed of duck ie he is a mutt. A mutt duck. He's huge and brownish black w/pretty rainbow colors all over like an oil slick and a white polka-dot belly. There is an asymmetrical poofy thing on the top of his head that kinda looks like a mohawk.

A punk rock mutt duck.

All ducks look more intelligent than mine. They probably are.

I got him from an abandoned embryology project. The 4-H office received poultry eggs from the university for schools that wanted to teach how McNuggets were made and had a bunch of extras so they donated them to the day camp where I was a counselor. When the eggs hatched, there were three ducklings and an assload of chicks. I really wanted a duck and planned on bringing one home once the camp was over. My mom warned me not to mention it to my father. I slipped, he said NO DUCK and the next day I brought home Baby Howie. (I also brought home a sickly chick that later turned into a strapping, *huge* rooster named Luke but that's a sad story.)

Baby Howie was loud. He was also petrified of water. I had to sit in his little duck pool w/him to teach him how to swim. Really. Baby Howie was otherwise fearless. He used to like climbing on my big black dog. He once tried to bite one of my cats when she hissed at him. OK, so 'fearless' and 'stupid' are interchangable but whatever.

Howie likes to stomp in puddles of mud. He stands in them and stamps his big, floppy feet so the muddy water gets all over him and then he runs over and tries to crawl in my lap.

He loves to eat big earthworms. And he's very noisy about it. It's kinda gross.

Howie *really* needs a girlfriend. About a month ago, I was sitting on the floor in the kitchen, feeding him romaine when he grabbed my shirt w/his bill and started doing this weird thing to my leg. It took me about three seconds to realize what he was doing. I cried 'No, Howie, no!' but he wouldn't listen. I had to distract him w/grapes. Now he does it almost every night. This depresses me.

All in all, I love Howie. He amuses me when I'm bored and makes me happy when I'm sad. I feed him so therefore, he loves me, too.

My duck kicks ass.

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