One of the joys of La Bourboule is Parc Fenestre. It is a large park in the centre of the town with lots of attractions like mini golf and a little train. Most of the attractions are geared towards children who are well catered for in La Bourboule. I spend many happy hours in this park. My favourite feature is a little out of the way and not too popular with the masses, and that is the duck-pond.
The duck-pond of La Bourboule is unique, in my opinion, in that it features exclusively plastic ducks. I have thought about this a great deal, and questioned any number of natives about it, but never received a satisfactory explanation. Most of the natives had never even noticed the plastic ducks, and were as baffled as I when I questioned them about this. One suggested that the French were notorious hunters of wild fowl, and perhaps had shot all the real ducks until the park keepers, tired of having to replace them, decided to use inedible plastic ducks which were, it was hoped, unattractive to hunters. This theory, while ingenious, did not seem plausible to me - hunting is not allowed in city centres even in France
Another person I interrogated thought that the plastic ducks might be cheaper to maintain, and therefore the thrifty city council had introduced them on monetary grounds. And an old man with a chiwawa assured me that a horrible duck pest had wiped out all the local waterfowl which had to be replaced by plastic ones.
All winter long I had pondered this matter, and when I finally returned in April an answer had suggested itself: the pond was teeming with tadpoles! Now ducks eat tadpoles, and lots of them. A pond with ducks will quickly run out of taddies, and no froglets will be left to emerge in August. Therefore I reckoned that the park keepers, no doubt fired by their zeal to encourage a resurgence in the waning numbers of amphibians in Europe , had introduced the plastic ducks to discourage real ducks from populating the pond. A flock of homeless ducks, flying over La Bourboule in search of a new abode, would spy the pond, approach, notice the ducks, conclude that the pond was already occupied, and, with a resigned shrug, fly away again.
That was my theory, and it pains me to report that it was widely pooh-poohed by all and sundry, not least the people of La Bourboule who did not believe their park keepers would adopt such devious designs. But when I returned today to the park, what did I see but a large sign depicting a frog in the middle of the duck-pond, announcing to visitors bemused by the plastic ducks that this was a frog-pond! Whether the park keepers had heard of my theory and decided that it was a good idea – after all, they already had the plastic ducks and the tadpoles, and it was better to be known as conservationists than as cheapskates too miserly to maintain real ducks – or whether I was the only one in La Bourboule who had cottoned on to their scheme I do not know. Either way I am happy. It just proves what I always say: La Bourboule is Cool!
