I got home from work tonight and went to check on ‘the lonely duckling’ to find to my horror he was gone! The signs of a duckling thief were clear…. Corn had been added to his duck crumbs, a doll had been left on his straw and a little dolls blanket and milk bottle were all at the scene of the crime. I concluded very quickly that a child had somehow managed to get into the garage, climb up to his box to steal the lonely duckling.

After a frantic search around the garage, I went down to the house in the hope that my daughter Katy might just have an idea of what might have happened but I discovered that she had asked to go to bed early because she was tired and my other daughter had wanted to sleep in her bedroom to keep her company….. Earlier on in the day, my wife had made a comment on the phone about how sweet it was that she had placed a tray under her bed with duck crumbs and water on it for her dollies…

Hmmm the pieces of the jigsaw went together in my head and I went up to Katy’s bedroom to find the lonely duckling under the duvet, cuddled up to my daughter. “But I want to look after the lonely duckling tonight” she sobbed…

I couldn’t bare to see the duckling on its own but I couldn’t kill it and now I couldn’t bare to hear the desperate cheep it made and Katy’s sobbing as I took the duckling from her…. So the lonely duckling had a new home for the night. Not in her bed as he would probably end up squashed but in a little box next to the bed.

I am going soft in my (old?) age.