A Quacker Meeting

With an insatiable appetite for grubs and other garden thugs, Cutie, Big Mama, and Max congregate regularly around the compost bins. Snarfeling (as Eliot Coleman affectionately refers to it) for tasty morsels, they provide a respite from the drudgery of those mundane garden chores. Cutie is a crested fawn-and-white Indian Runner, and Max is a non-crested one. Big Mama is a Pekin. They turned 2 in March and, thankfully, have survived snow, foxes, neighborhood cats, and the most wicked creature of them all: our yellow lab pup, Miss Scarlett, who plays a little rough, but is playing nonetheless. Raising them has been quite an adventure, let me tell you. I'm still surprised at how territorial they are about their "turf" in the backyard. I've actually seen them gang up on a 12 pound cat and chase him over the picket fence. They're very dear to me, despite the amount of poop they produce, and I treasure their companionship in the garden.