Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1894 — A Duck Drowned by an Oyster. [ARTICLE]

A Duck Drowned by an Oyster.

The meek and lowly oyster can sometimes become a revengeful as well as a dangerous antagonist, as an unwary Baltimore duck found to his cost. This careless duck, belonging to the tribe known as “fishermen,” was swimming about in search of food off the shore near Claitorne when he espied an oyster - a nice, fat. iuicy oyster he was—■ with shell widely narted, feeding, doubtless, on the simple and ratner intanginlo diet upon which an oyster is suppose Ito feed. The duck, true to his greedy instincts, diced for that supi osed juicy mor. el and wa; about to swallow him whole, without salt or pepper even, when the angry passions of the oyster arose, and napping his shells together caught the unsuspecting duck’s bill in a vise-like embrace. The drck rose to the surface, shook his head, m imbled apologies through his tight-shut mouth, but the bivalve’s heart was hardened, and he held on. Soon that constant load pulling down his head, and growing weightier and weightier, began to tire t ie duck and his neck arched lower and lower until finally it s-ank into the water and he was drowned. A deckhand on the steamboat Tangier saw the duck floating with head submerged and picked him up. The oyster was still clinging to his victim with a relentless, deadly grasp, and the tragedy that must have been onai ted as described wa . revealed. Both the duck and the slayer vere taken to Baltimore, and proved quite a curiosity.