Lame Duck Protest teachers' notes

Illustrated by Michel Gaudion

Released in February 2009 by Interactive Publications

Synopsis

Hannah and her little sister Zoe find a duck with a broken leg in their reserve. Though Mr Collins, Ms Santisi and Mrs Hobson remind the girls that wild ducks shouldn’t be handled, the girls decide the duck is too sick to leave behind. Mum drives them to the vet, where the girls name the duck Antonia. She adopts Zoe as her mum and follows her everywhere. When it seems that the reserve is about to be turned into a shopping centre, Antonia helps the locals hold a 'Lame Duck Protest’. However, next day Antonia meets other wild ducks and flies away with them.

Themes and Issues

The main theme of this story is what a community can do to achieve a common goal. Hannah and Zoe live in a pleasant environment close to a reserve where wildlife flourishes and the locals meet. Thus the story revolves around keeping that environment safe from inappropriate development.

What inspired this story

When a co-writer passed a sign on my street saying 'Lame Duck Protest’, she challenged me to write a story about a lame duck. When people grow older they sometimes have trouble walking and refer to themselves as 'lame ducks’. I also wanted to show how youngsters and seniors have more in common than maybe they first realise.

Did you know?

• Ducks are mostly aquatic and may be found in both fresh water and sea water
• Most ducks have a wide flat beak adapted for dredging
• They eat a variety of food such as grasses, aquatic plants, fish, insects and worms
• Many species of duck are temporarily flightless while moulting (losing feathers). They seek out protected areas with good food supplies during this period
• Some ducks, particularly in Australia where rainfall is patchy and erratic, are nomadic
• Ducks are known to imprint or follow one person if found when very young
• Wildlife management is the process of keeping certain wildlife populations at a sustainable level. It protects endangered and threatened species
• Most wildlife management is concerned with the preservation and control of natural habitats

Comprehension Questions

1. In your own words describe Hannah, her little sister Zoe, and some of the other people who appear in this story.
2. What is wrong with Antonia the duckling when Hannah and Zoe first find her?
3. Why are the girls told not to touch wild birds?
4. What might be going to happen to the reserve?
5. How do Hannah, Zoe and their friends rescue the reserve?
6. Hannah describes both her little sister Zoe’s response to finding Antonia, and what happens in the reserve. Would the story have been different if it was told in the third person (using 'he’ and 'she’ instead of 'I’)?

Research Activities

1. Draw a map of your own neighbourhood. Show built-up areas, parks, reserves, shopping centres, farms and/or uncultivated bush.
2. Survey animals that come to your school and your suburb (including birds). How many species are tame? How many are wild? Have the numbers of wild animals increased or decreased in the last few years?
3. Research wild water birds in your area. How many varieties are there?
4. Look up the RSPCA website and find out how they, and other similar organisations, care for sick animals

Creative Response

1. Design a costume of your favourite animal.
2. Draw and colour as many wild birds as you can find
   • In your neighbourhood
   • In your state
   • In your country
3. Design a poster advertising the Lame Duck Protest

Writing Activities

1. Pretend you are Hannah or Zoe and write a letter to the council arguing that the reserve should be protected and that the planned development should never take place
2. Find an area in your neighbourhood that needs preserving. Imagine that it will be taken over by a high rise development. Draw up a table and write down the positives and negatives of this area being developed

Topics to Debate

1. Development is more important than conservation
2. Wild ducks have to stay wild

Illustrator Michel Gaudion

Michele Gaudion began her professional career as a Freelance Illustrator in 1985. She has worked in advertising, publishing and marketing in Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney.

Michele's present focus is as a Concept Visualiser, and she spends much of her time storyboarding for Advertising and Marketing companies. She has a penchant for people-oriented work—understanding and interpreting characters with the
appropriate emotion is her skill. Her website is: mgaudionart.blogspot.com

From "Country Viewpoint" (ABC National Bush Telegraph)

"Wild animals can survive in surprising circumstances. The other day I came outside our apartment to find four young people gathered in our back yard watching a wild duck. When they stood aside I saw Mother Duck was being followed by nine identical fluffy yellow and brown ducklings, all imprinted so successfully they followed Mother's every move. However it was obvious that Mother Duck had made a grave mistake nesting in our back yard. Now she was stuck behind a bicycle shed. Beyond lay a series of fences, houses and roads. Now she couldn't get her family through to Albert Park Lake.

While our young helpers were trying to guide her out from behind the shed, poor Mother was getting into more and more of a flap... this quite literally. Then someone had the bright idea of placing her and her babies inside a cardboard carton and carrying them to the lake. Certainly if she'd tried to negotiate the area between our back yard and the lake the family's survival chances were slim.

Easy enough to catch the nine chattering ducklings and place them inside a carton, but Mamma objected fiercely to being captured, flapping about and refusing to join her babies. All this time the ducklings kept up an endless squawk. The only solution was to hold the box low enough for Mother to hear them and thus lead her the kilometre or so to the lake.

The last we saw of the duck family they were nestled on a mud patch in the bushes beside the water. When we went back a little later to see if they were okay, they had disappeared. There are safe islands in the middle of this lake where swans and waterbirds are safe from marauding dogs and cats. We can only hope that somehow Mother Duck found her way there. We had no doubt that her babies will have followed her. In spite of doomsayers, we thought this proved how successfully some wild animals have adapted to our urban sprawl."