Boyduck Goose: His Life and Times: Book I: My Name Is Boyduck and This Is My Story

By Harriet Lila Baker

Adventurous, curious, and feisty, Boyduck Goose enjoys his idyllic life on the farm with the horses, the riding students, and Ms. Lila and Mr. Sam. More like a family pet than just another of the barnyard animals, he literally rules the roost. However, unlike other geese, he prefers to ride in Mr. Sams truck rather than swim in the creek or pond!

Follow along with Boyduck Goose as he grows up to be a goose (his parents thought he was a duck!) and learns human and goosey (and horsy!) things as well as gets into his fair share of trouble as he explores his world. If it werent for his friend Copper and his parents, Miss Lila and Mr. Sam, poor Boyduck would have found himself without feathers before his first birthday!

Humorous, uplifting, and based on true stories of the real Boyduck Goose, Harriet Lila Baker has created charming books for animal lovers of all ages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524544577

Harriet Lila Baker

About the Author Harriet Lila Baker is a retired schoolteacher whose specialty areas included special education, being a reading specialist, and elementary education. Her interests include horses, dog breeding, tennis, swimming, and of course, writing and reading poetry and prose. She and her husband have raised two children.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by Harriet Lila Baker. 730992

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016915702

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-5245-4458-4

   Hardcover   978-1-5245-4459-1

   EBook      978-1-5245-4457-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 09/20/2016

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to all horse-crazy kids.

It was inspired by First Lady Barbara Bush when she was reading to children on television as a means to encourage literacy among all people of all ages. As I was writing it, I was imagining her holding up my rather large book with lots of pictures, reading it to a group of children seated on the floor, and explaining some of the happenings.

Also, I was trying to form the Patuxent River State Park with the Honorable Governor of Maryland, William Donald Schaefer, to honor our soldiers, including my sons Benjamin and Jonathan, during the Persian Gulf Crisis of 1991. The book is located on the park’s borders, two riding academies and one private, thoroughbred, racehorse, breeding farm.

We now have a park.

I also wish to acknowledge and thank Miss Penny, who was the puppet/marionette director of the huge puppet/marionette standing theater, built specifically for her to teach children to perform plays and to house her more than three hundred handmade puppets and marionettes, handmade stage props, and hand-painted backdrops. The theater was located in Hanson, Massachusetts, at Camp Kiwanee, run by the Camp Fire Girls’ Council.

I would love to thank Dr. Josephine Posie Magurn, the Maryland veterinarian, who appears in the book. She’s my own personal hero, whom I wish I could be just like.

Eleven summers, I spent at Camp Kiwanee, learning crafts, swimming, tennis, archery, horseback riding, and camping-out skills with about two-hundred and fifty, other, girl campers.

My favorite activity was the theater. As Miss Penny’s apprentice, I eventually became a puppet master and later, for one glorious summer, the director of the theater, while Miss Penny was out recuperating from a surgical operation.

I wrote this children’s anthology with a puppet performance in mind.

Miss Penny’s real life name was Clara Fawcette. She was an author in her own right, whose daughter had run away to join the circus. Miss Penny was a family friend of the Steele family—all neighbors and natives of Maine. The father was Richard Steele who was the director of the waterfront. He was also a teacher during the winters and an accomplished square dance caller. He organized, taught, and led a square dance for the camp’s membership, every two weeks for years. The mother was Carol Steele and she was the director of the extremely elaborate, arts and crafts department. Their daughter, Suzy, was my age and, at camp, my best friend along with Nancy Goldberg. From the time we were Bluebirds of eight years old to the age of eighteen and trained camp counselors, we were a threesome. All of us loved the puppet/marionette theater. The joyous memories of times there, stayed with me, my whole life, including how to make the marionettes, set up plays, run the productions, and take care of all the equipment. All fascinating. Ask me sometime. I have quite a few stories.

I hope you like the books. I certainly loved writing them; and more will follow.

I wish to acknowledge and thank all the people who helped me form the Patuxent River State Park, the extraordinary staff and owners of Woodland Riding Academy, Reddemeade Equishare, Bowie Riding Academy, Riddle’s Thoroughbred Racing Farm, and the wonderful staff at the Baltimore Zoo. Especially, I would like to thank Horse Master Michael Wayne Smith who appears as Mr. Sam. In real life, Michael is the owner of the three riding academies I listed above, who taught Copper (whose real life name is Vegas), my family, and me to love, ride, and appreciate horses. All of the stories (most anyway) are based on real-life events.

That’s it! Oh, yes. Michael says the horses would like you to visit Woodland, Reddemeade, and Bowie Riding Academy. And would you please bring carrots? Thanks.

Contents

Chapter 1 –    My Name Is Boyduck

Chapter 2 –    My First Encounter with a Horse

Chapter 3 –    Copper

Chapter 4 –    Mother’s Teaching

Chapter 5 –    I Grew Up

Chapter 6 –    On Flying

Chapter 7 –    Horse Washing

Chapter 8 –    Gooseprint Cookies

Chapter 9 –    On the Subject of Alcohol

Chapter 10 –    My Father’s