Captain Bob

This morning I awoke to a riotous tumult. My Beloved was hovering about the front of our abode nervously pacing back and forth. "What's wrong?" I inquired. "We have a problem." Her look was both stern and panicked.

She took my hand in hers and guided me gently to the front windows. She pointed and through the open windows I could hear the sounds of crying carried on the morning breeze through the ageing screening. There was trouble a-brewin'. A mother mallard was squawking and raising a ruckus across the path. She was in a tizzy, circling a rusty iron grate long ago embedded in the hot asphalt pavement. "Something's wrong," My Beloved exclaimed.

Quicker than Santa on a rooftop, Captain Bob sprang into action. Donning his cape he grasped the door handle nearly ripping the massive glass door off its hinges. Powering through the opening he leaped over the sidewalk and retaining wall in a single bound, and blazed down the front lawn leaving a burnt trail of once lush and thick grass (and weeds) in his wake.

Across the street he flew (after first checking for cars by looking both ways) and threw himself into the chaos. His keen intellect instantly surmised the situation. Baby ducks were trapped below ground, locked in their prison by a massive rusting hulk of a grate. With no regard for himself, Captain Bob wrapped his powerful hands about the bars of the grate and with his muscles rippling and straining under the weight, ripped the iron prison door from its station and flung in across the lawn.

There they were, two snugly little ducklings quacking away while mother mallard squawked from across the street. "Save my babies", she cried. (Fortunately Captain Bob speaks fluent mallard). So as not to scare the duckies as there were already traumatised, Captain Bob slowly lowered himself into the seething abyss. Taking his fluffy yet manly cape he wrapped the duckies in his powerful arms and raised them back to freedom and a joyous reunion with their mother.

With a tear in her eye, mother mallard quacked, "got any crackers?"

Captain Bob to the rescue.