One day in early spring, a mama duck was impatiently walking around the eggs in her nest, waiting for all her ducklings to hatch. Suddenly, she heard the first “crunch”. One of the yellow ducklings was coming into the world. And soon, she heard the cluck a second and a third time. Only the fourth, the biggest of the eggs, still nothing. The mama duck circled around it, pecking at it with her beak to urge it on, but the duckling in the egg had yet to hatch.
Just then an old goose was walking by and saw the mama duck looking worriedly at the egg. “I tell you, Mrs. Duck, this is a strange egg. I’m sure nothing good will come out of this.”
At that moment, the egg finally cracked and broke, and the last duckling finally broke through. But what was it? The last duckling looked different, it was big, ugly and grey.
“Ugh, so ugly,” the other ducklings turned up their noses at the youngest sibling. “I told you so,” the old goose chipped in with her own bit of the mill. The poor duckling was quite unhappy about it, and everyone frowned at him and called him an ugly duckling.
And the sneers and teasing didn’t stop even after a while, for it remained an ugly duckling for all to see, and his siblings were ashamed of it. The duck’s mother scolded them and urged them to be good to the duckling. “Give it time, I’m sure it will grow up to be as nice as the rest of you.” But no, the siblings continued to taunt the duckling. And not just them. The duckling couldn’t take the teasing anymore and decided to go out into the world. Hopefully, it would find a place where others won’t find it ugly.
It was a long walk until it came to the farm. There were lots of farm animals living there, but they all rolled their eyes at the duckling and asked how come it’s so ugly. The duckling didn’t make any friends. So it decided to live alone, away from the other animals.
It wandered the countryside alone for a long time, the days were getting cold, when it suddenly arrived at a large pond. There it saw the most beautiful birds it had ever seen. Snow-white swans, with graceful, long necks, floating gracefully on the water. The duckling watched them almost breathlessly, spellbound. “I wish I looked like them,” tears came to the duckling’s eyes. It didn’t dare come out of the reeds, because the beautiful creatures could see him, and the sight of him terrified everyone. At one moment the swans spread their beautiful wings, flapped them over the water, and flew away from the pond. The duckling sighed and hoped in the corner of his heart that it would see them again.
The duckling decided to wait for them there, not knowing that swans move from still waters to rivers in the winter. Meanwhile, the days grew shorter and colder, and the duckling was getting hungry and chilly. Fortunately, two children discovered it and took it home to help it through the winter. It wouldn’t have made it until spring on its own. When the weather warmed up again, the children released the duckling back into the wild.
At first it didn’t know what to do, but then it thought it might go back to the pond. Maybe it would see those beautiful white birds again. As luck would have it, the swans were indeed once again gracing the surface of the water with their exquisite grace. As if in rapture, the duckling was approaching the pond when he heard one of the swans say, “Well, well, well, what a beautiful little swan, come here.”
The duckling thought the swan was playing a joke on him, but it wanted to see it up close, so it walked shyly to the pond. By then other swans were coming in and all of them were gushing over the beauty of our duckling. What’s going on? Why are they saying that? All sorts of questions were swirling around in the duckling’s head. Suddenly, the duckling noticed its reflection in the water. What’s that? The duckling saw that it looked just like those beautiful birds. It had white feathers, a long, graceful neck, in short, it had become a beautiful swan!
Who knows how a swan’s egg got into a duck’s nest. Well, it happened, and that’s how this story about a duckling who was different from the others around him came about. But the once ugly duckling was now a lovely swan and soon forgot all the troubles it had experienced.
