jwaneeta

I need to go to the post office, but the DL for the Helen K files are taking forever. If I let the computer sleep the DL will abort -- Lord knows why, but it's happened before. So here I sit, wiggling my mouse. At least there's thunder.

eretria's post about ducks reminded me of a dreamy experience at a monastery.



The monastery in Brooklyn covered two city blocks, including the grounds and artificial lake. Huge place. It had been built as an asylum for dypsomaniacs in the 19th century, but they liked to let the dypsomaniacs run free in those days, so for lack of patronage it was purchased by the Visitation and turned into a cloister with very few changes.

It had two vast wings, and the wings, three stories high, looked down on a courtyard created by a connecting passageway. A door led into the passageway from the coutyard; another door led from the passage way onto the rolling lawn.

The courtyard was called the preau -- it's customary to use antique terms in a monastery, preserving the spirit of the original foundresses. A disused fountain in the center had been filled with dirt and planted with roses and to this shelter a single female mallard repaired, year after year, to brood her clutch of eggs.

The lake was Darwinially chancy: the monastery's back acre was patrolled by predatory crows of diabolical size and ferocity. Duckling bits were often discovered on the grass. So each year one duck put two and two together, flapped over the passage wall and made her nest in the preau.

"What's she going to do when they hatch?" I asked one afternoon, peering down.

"I'll call you when it happens," replied my cleaning partner.

In due course the ducklings hatched: the word ran through the monastery. Soft nun footsteps converged, gentle nun eyes watched from every window.

"There they go," cried the nuns.

The duck hopped out of the fountainbed, and five balls of yellow fluff hopped out after her. They marched in a line across the courtyard, and a waiting nun courteously opened the door. They went up the steps in formation, across the passage, through another open door, and down onto the lawn. And so to the lake: plop, plop, plop.

"It's been happening for eighty years," smiled a watching nun. "We always have our preau duck."

"I don't get it. How does it work? How do they know you'll open the door?"

"Who can say? Perhaps Holy Father Francis guides them. He was very fond of birds."

73% download. Good grief.