Local report

[muckefuck]

DUCKIES! There's a tiny Japanese-style garden tucked in between our ugly modern building and its elegant predecessor next door. It's shaped like a flattened trapezoid with the fieldstone wall of the older building as the base and floor-to-ceiling windows on the other three sides. I was passing one of them this morning when I saw something unexpected: A female mallard, standing right next to the glass. Then I saw something even more unexpected: At least eight recently-hatched ducklings, maybe as many as a dozen, swarming behind her. How the hell did they get in there? The walls around the garden are over four metres high. Obviously the mother can clear them; did she pick this as the most protected brooding site around? Where do they find their water and forage? Does she ferry everything over in her beak? How is it possible that none of the Green Committee--who recently moved all the standing plants from the first floor out in the garden--happened to notice a duck nest in there?

HANKIES The plants were moved outside to protect them from the construction going on all over the first floor. No Brimleys among the current crop of workers, but one guy did catch my eye with the snug-fitting denim over his round butt and the...hankie hanging out of his pocket? Remind me, boys, what's a white hankie in the right-hand pocket? I want to say "anything, anytime", but I don't remember and no way in hell am I going to Google "hankie code" at work.