Someone dimmed the restaurant lights, and the Peabody mallards began their waddle from the hotel lobby to the roof, leaving behind puddles of chlorinated fountain water in their wake. Their quacking reverberated along the marble hallway through the quiet restaurant to our booth.
“They’ve been doing that ever since I was a little girl,” she said, her voice thick with the past.
Those ducks, part of a family line with origins somewhere in the forests of Arkansas. Someone had converted them. Somewhere over the years, those ducks had forgotten the feel of unchlorinated water.