A Sad Sort Of Story & A Quality Scotch Egg

As it turned out, the chap with the ducks who I thought was a farmer, wasn't a farmer.
He works as a part time taxi driver.He was not the owner of the ducks either, they were owned by his son..funny how the true story is more complicated than it had to be.
The son rang me last night about the ducks, the conversation was a difficult one as he sounded somewhat drunk,but eventually I arranged to call in to assess the birds in situ so to speak. It was no trouble, because I was almost passing his house today anyway, I had planned to go up to the vets to collect flea treatment for the animals.
The duck owner, as it turned out, was still in his teens. He looked as though he had just got out of bed when I arrived at two and had great difficulty walking to the front door.His speech was still slurred and slightly laboured so It was not hard to figure out that he was recovering from some sort of head injury.
He led me to a small enclosure in the back garden which housed two sad looking drakes sitting on a hard concrete floor.The run was sparse but clean enough and there was pellets in a bowl and clean water set up in the corner.They needed to be housed on some grass with room to run around.
" why are you getting rid of them" I asked and the boy looked incredibly sad and somewhat sheepish
"I can't look after them anymore" he slurred .... "I've had a bad car accident"
The garden was filled with runs and little enclosures, all of them quiet and empty and the boy explained rather morosely that all of his hens,budgies,quail, pigeons and ferrets had been given away to good homes.Only the two drakes were left and true to form, no one would take a couple of mucky looking drakes off his hands.
Drakes, with all of their bullying sexual ways, are something I could do without, but there was something so sad about the fact that this lad had to lose his menagerie of pets because of an arbitrary accident, I said I would take them. In the great scheme of things, it was no skin off my nose
"You wont cull them to eat will you" he asked when I eventually caught both birds and I assured him that they had found a good home.
"That's good" he slurred "I raised these two from duckings..."
"Have they got names?" I asked
"Bert and Ernie" he replied " from Sesame Street!"
"I remember them" I said
He tried to smile, but it just didnt work out.

Duck no 1 Bert

Duck no 2 Ernie

I felt somewhat melancholy when I got the ducks home, and after setting them up in the duck house with food and water , I took the dogs out for a walk.Of course all I could think of was the sad long term rehab ramifications for the lad with the head injury, His journey to some sort of normality would be a long and difficult one.
As I wandered through the centre of the village, Trelawnyd Val called out to me to come over
She had a pressie for me!
It was a QUALITY SCOTCH EGG from the posh Hawarden Estates Farm Shop.......
Another delightfully well timed and thoughtful gift.........
I managed to keep it intact, until I got home