In the last 24 hours, eleven year old Gabriel’s greatest problem in life, as reported by him, was his duck and her newly laid egg. He reported: “Matilda lost all interest in her egg once laid. Better was expected of her but she was refusing to hatch it.”
Sad as ever, he lamented: “Matilda doesn’t even look at her own egg”. His gentle efforts to prod and persuade Mother Matilda to ‘look at her own egg’ ended in vain. This maternal disconnect and indifference broke his heart big time.
Who would ever deny a l’il duckling a life in this world ……
So he took upon himself the honorable task of hatching her egg.
Rushing to his rescue, the elder brother, Gregory after much googling, came up with that ‘bright idea’ of persuading their dad to buy an incubator off Amazon for a few thousand rupees to hatch this one egg.
Since the Amazon idea of the sons found no acceptance with the father, Gregory “connected the dots “and some wires and a bulb and what not and then there was this proud proclamation that an “incubator” happened to hatch the egg .
After much intrigue and calculation, early next morning, working stealthily like thieves, the homemade “incubator” was cautiously smuggled into the study of the unsuspecting grandfather where the egg was laid to rest and hatch with a spotlight on it. The grandfather’s study was the ‘time and tested’ hangout for the brothers as it was out of bounds for their mother and this hangout had all the privacy needed for their intrigues.
With the poor grandfather’s study converted overnight into a hatchery, on his arrival early next morning, the grandfather sensing something was amiss, asked his two grandsons what was happening.
As a matter of principle, since information is strictly shared on a ‘need to know basis’ by the brothers, the grandfather was politely instructed not to switch off the spotlight on their makeshift “incubator” for 21 days which the grandfather promptly did after a few minutes not knowing the reason why he was told not to.
Realizing that the Grandfather’s study was no safe haven for their hatchery, they have since relocated their ’incubator’ and the egg upstairs in their not-so-private study waiting with bated breath for that hatching moment to happen.
