Mallards

Walking out to retrieve the Sunday paper, I had a flight of mallards pass overhead.  A flight of four, I didn't catch the coloration of the plumage, but one of them, a hen, was quacking like crazy.

Nothing in the world sounds like a mallard hen.  It's a sound I remember from my youth, wading around in Catahoula lake, shooting ducks.  I haven't hunted big ducks in forty years, but the sound brought me back to the smell of burlap, rubber hip boots and that black mud.