Mistress Campbell

No, your eyes do not deceive you, and we have not doctored her profile pic: Mistress Campbell is indeed, not a chicken, but she often behaves like one. Well, some of the time, and in a variety of interesting ways, but we’ll address that particular conundrum later. For now, suffice it to say she’s as unique a duck as you’re likely to meet in these here parts.

To begin, she’s singular in that she’s, well, singular. She’s the one and only Khaki Campbell on the hostel premises. She likes to pal around on the pond with the three mallards (one mother and two daughters), but she’s larger and waddles wider and slower than they do, so she often lags behind as they meander the sandy paths. Also, the mallard family can fly away if they wish, but alas, Mistress Campbell, who is of a flightless breed, cannot, though we are very happy to provide her with her forever hostel home here.

More on the Khaki Campbell as an established, differentiated duck breed: they were developed over 100 years ago in Gloucestershire, England (and not the Scottish Highlands as you might’ve guessed, if you know your clan history). They are widely applauded as great and prolific layers, but as far as we know, Mistress Campbell has yet to lay nary an edible egg on the property, even though she often coops with the chickens (i.e., the regular layers of breakfast) at night.

Which brings us back to our conundrum. Every evening, about an hour before dusk, the hostel’s chickens are fed cracked corn scratch (and maybe some savory kitchen scraps) and penned for the nighttime in their run. Most evenings, the mallards will personally deliver Mistress Cambell to the run’s gate, so that she may partake of scratch and scraps and later roost with the chickens. At that point, while the mallards will mosey on back to spend the night on the bug-rich pond, Mistress Campbell will cozy herself to bed in the hay-lined chicken coop just before full dark.

Does Mistress Campbell know she’s a Khaki Campbell with a great and venerable century of duckdom lineage? We do not know. Does she even know she’s a duck, and not a chicken? Again, we do not know. Our mistress is yet another mystery of the forest, ne’er to be solved.

- Court Harler, Harler Literary