Ducks On Slugs

I have found a new measure of happiness.  

Happy as a lark.  Happy as a clam.  Happy as a pig in shit.   

These all pale in comparison to my new measure, which is also animal oriented:

Happy as ducks on slugs

Let me explain...

Ducks make interesting pets, but they aren't exactly affectionate.  They won't fight too much if picked up, but generally they keep you at a distance.  Like the two ducks in our family.

But they are much nicer when they are 'on' slugs...

The common gray garden slug, Deroceras (Agriolimax) reticulatum, is an irritating pest and a generally unloved creature.  It hides by day in some cool, moist spot and slides out at night to munch on your carefully-tended plants.  

Our 'pet' Khaki Campbell ducks, Sybil and Odysseus (OD), have a fondness for slugs edging towards mania, it turns out.  When I offer them slugs I've collected (on late night sweeps of the garden), they snap them up as happily as, well, larks, clams, or those pigs I mentioned.  Happier even.

Since I've been providing this slugfeast, Sybil and OD have been much fonder of me.  They waddle up in the morning looking expectant.  After gulping down the slugs they charge about in the grass probing every possible hiding place the ducks seem to know (instinctively?) slugs might use.  They even find a few and spend the day in what, for ducks, seems a good mood.

If I've provided enough slugs, the ducks might even get close and let me pet them without flinching (too much).  This goes against Sybil and OD's ducky instincts and is a true measure of just how incredibly Happy slugs make them.

So this Holiday Season, and for the New Year, let's all of us reach for a new level of happiness.  Not content to be merely 'as happy as humanly possible',

May We All Be As Happy As Ducks On Slugs!