A Little More from a Mouthy Broad

love, loss, and gentle lookouts

For folks who did not read “We can hold all this,” I should start off by saying mouthy broad is the name Raechel has given to one of the mallard ducks who live on Heron Lake. For her distinctive call, which sounds like a cross between sadistic cackling and irrefutable nagging.

But first, a whimsical music riddle. What indie rock song, a sentimental solo ballad, in fact, can you entirely distort the meaning of by adding a single “s”? (If it’s in the chorus, the added s shows up with each chorus.)

Want a clue? It’s from a song about love and death from the middle ‘00s. You’ll get the answer in the next newsletter.

And if you need some music in the meantime, and for anyone else who misses that Appalachian sound, I’ve been enjoying David Hughes, Trials in Time.

Now back to this mallard duck on our local lake, a little waypoint where the water tarries a while to support an abundant community of fish, turtles, birds, grasses, and trees before it continues on to the Lake Erie, and thence to the Niagara, Ontario, the Moliantegok or Kitcikanii sipi, and from there to the ocean.

She always had her two boos she rolled with, or paddled, I guess (I know that’s not typical for mallards, but them’s the facts. I guess she never read the behavioral guide for her species.). A bald eagle, hungry, determined, visited our little lake. The next time we were there, R and I noticed that the mouthy broad was distressed, confused, and alone, seemingly searching for someone amidst a huge flock of geese.