Fowl Language

My kids think that I am fluent in both chicken and duck.

Mainly because I told them that I am fluent in both chicken and duck.

They asked about dog.

"I wish," I replied.

"Cat?" They wanna know...

"Not a lick," I tell them.

"But chicken and duck?"

Fluent.

Every morning we take our same daily neighborhood walk, a half block west, four blocks south, a full block east, four blocks north and a half block west and once in a blue moon, if we're feeling "dangerous" we'll head east first, reversing the course.

And every morning we also keep our eyes open for Muscovy ducks, or Scobies as we like to call them. If we're close enough the kids will immediately stop, sushing one another so that, "Mommy can hear the ducks," and then I'll listen intently, often times quacking back when the ducks pause, before relaying some made up conversation we're having to my eager children.

On days that we can't find any ducks, my kids will take turns quacking randomly then asking me to decipher what they've said, me pretending that they were telling every duck in the neighborhood that they love to eat crayons in their underwear in the middle of the road. They laugh hysterically.

One day they're going to realize there's no tooth fairy, or Easter bunny, or Santa Claus and that may very well be the day they also realize that Mom is most certainly not fluent in chicken or duck...

But for now... we quack.