A quacking bush
Bushwhacked on November 12, 2023.
This Wednesday I was met with more underdunkerous duckery than one man can handle. (Even an occasionally duck-shaped man like me.)
Not mubbleduckery, mind you—nor a mubbled daiquiri—but plain, straight-up duckery. (The overdunkerous rubberduckery was also relentless, but we can ignore that for now.)
I had been out and about, snuffling about in a local woodland swamp, a few miles from my palatial abode. (Not the swamp full of alligators. The one where my prize ficus tree drowned in a politicking accident.)
I was looking for Mel’s Hole once again, when instead I happenstanced upon the Quacking Bush. It wasn’t a bush that quacks, mind you—it was a duck bar, owned and tended by a man named Q.B. Quackenbush. He greeted me as I entered, then eyed me askance, as most men are wont to do at first. He didn’t look much like a duck, yet a duck’s ass sat upon his head. (That would be the hairdo, not an actual buttocks.)
Becasue’s voluminous ass was on my head—that is to say, on my mind—but what I had to contend with right now was a duck bar owned by a man with a duck’s ass upon his mind—that is to say, upon his head. (And I wasn’t even sure what they served at a duck bar: Duck beer? Duck ale? Duck schnapps? No doubt something duck-related.)
My thoughts drifted to my own shiny head and I adjusted my asshat slightly, highly conscious of my newfound resemblance to a cue ball with a nose and a butt on top. (Indeed there was more atop my noggin than Becasue’s butt.)
I wasn’t sure what to say when going to a duck bar. (“Quack”? “Quack do you do”?)
The situation was tense. I adjusted my gluteal headgear again. Off in the distance, a duck quacked. (Should I start gurning? Would the man start gurning back at me in perfect synchronicity?)
After much rumination, I settled upon my course of action: I gurned out my best duckface at the man behind the bar. (If only I had a selfie stick.)
Q.B. Quackenbush gurned back at me. (So I gurned harder.)
Quacking softly, I asked the bartender, “Do you have any crackers? Or quackers?” (He looked at me like it was my brain that had cracked—or perhaps quacked.)
“This is a duck bar,” he quackled. (“And you’re not a duck,” he cackled contemptuously.)
I stopped quacking and began quaking. How dare he! “Of course I’m a duck!” (I was in my most resolutely duck-shaped form today.)
I gurned out another duckface, still aquake and quacking. (My competitive gurning days were long behind me, but I could still gurn out an award-winning duckface, or my name wasn’t Phillip Norbert Årp.)
“If you’re a duck—” The bartender eyed me keenly—almost duckily, one might say. “Riddle me this: How much wood would a wood duck duck if a wood duck would duck wood?” (I wondered, would a wood duck duck wood at all?)
“Well, that’s obvious—” I honked back confidently, before remembering this wasn’t a goose club, but a duck bar. “But you riddle me this first: If a tree falls in the woodland swamp, and only a wood duck is around to hear it, does it make a quacking sound?” (If nothing else, the bartender had to admire my lusitanic temerity.)
He paused, poised to answer, then thought better of it. “Fair enough. So what’ll it be?” (I won—me, me, me!)
Departing the Quacking Bush a few hours later, piss-drunk on duck shots, stumbling and bumbling about the swamp, I realized that I had, amidst a heated conversation with one of the barflies ducks, confused the idea of crackling crackers with quacking Quakers.
(This was truly an embarrassment from which I might never recover.)
Two patrons—one was a mallard and the other was either a wood duck or a wooden duck—were engaged in an intense argument over how many horsefeathers could dance on the head of an ostrich. (I had never pondered this before, but I found myself immediately intrigued and soon obsessed with finding the answer.)
I joined in the conversation and took the adamant position that the answer was a mere three: One feather on the bill and one in each ear. (Ostriches have tiny ears.)
It didn’t make sense. (And it didn’t have to.)
But my mallardy new friend took the position that it was four. And the wooden duck just sat their being all coy. (He was a decoy, after all.)
Much agitated argumentation and querulous quacking ensued, followed by pounding on the bar, pounding on chests, flapping of feathers, and pointing of fingers and wingtips. (Finally the fists and feathers flew.)
I continued my hobbling, limping journey out of the Whatanagawatchee Swamp in which I had found myself enquagmired, still sore over losing that argument to those two ducks. The water was fetid, the mud was deep, and everything got worse when a badling of muddled mud ducks surrounded me and nearly drove me to drowning. (Then a madding of mubbleducks mubbled me into thinking I was being exsanguinated by pincer monkeys.)
I ran, shrieking and cursing. That daiquiri, mubbled or not, really started to sound good right about then. (If only I hadn’t lost all my rum in a dome-chroming accident a smootful of days ago, I could have had quite the snootful going!)
I survived and made it home—somehow. Then I found my mulbiary had caught on fire. Luckily, my mulberries had fled on foot and survived the conflagration. (Regardless, a panicked quack attack soon gripped me.)
Then I realized my dome still wasn’t shiny enough, so I picked up a duck brush, a dab of chrome polish, and went to work. (I lost my hair before that dome-chroming accident, mind you.)
P.S.: I bushwhacked out this Sundaily scrivenry only because I already quackenbushed one out during my 2008 quack attack.
P.P.S.: (And my parenthesis addiction sure has been sated now!)