When Matt was a baby I lived in Park Slope. It was different there then, it was smaller and it was much less mall like. We ised to love to go to Prospect Park and feed the ducks with another mother and her baby. As the kids got older Matt would excitedly call out "Duck water! Duck water!" when he saw me grabbing stale bread for our outing. One nice spring day the other mother and I were at the pond with the kids when three boys came along who were, judging by the backpacks they wore, cutting school and on their way somewhere. The boys paused alsong side of us to observe the swimming ducks and one of them picked up a fallen branch and tossed it. Much to all of our surpirse (the boys were shocked too) the branch hit one of the ducks, breaking it's neck. The duck thrashed around widly for a bit before drowning. It was horrifying.
The other day I drove over a bridge and couldn't figure out what a man, who seemed to be having some kind of jerky motions was doing. As I passed him I figured out that he was tossing bread to a flock of flying seagulls and for some reason, this man reminded me of the boy who unintentionally killed the duck. I'd like to believe that the boy grew up and went out of his way to be extra kind to animals for the rest of his life and did things like stand on a bridge tossing old bagels to flocks of seagulls.
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