Location: The harbor in Burlington, Vermont near the U.S. Coast Guard station. The boatless boat-access ramp.

A bit of a chill. Windy, too.

Yours truly was the only homo sapiens. Haven’t been down there all year. These guys had been sitting and floating along the shoreline having a little chat when I pulled up.

I popped out of my freshly inspected 2000 edition motor vehicle {McCaffrey’s Sunoco at North & North] and they came right over.

“Where you been,” asked the babe on the left?

“Slight life-style change,” said I. “2007’s been my year off the bike. It wasn’t just the cancer, it was time for a change of the routine. People still tell me they saw me on the bike the other day somewhere. I’ve stopped telling them I’ve been out of the bike saddle since December. People, after all, will see what they want to see.”

“You don’t have to remind us of that,” quacked the dude on the right.

“Sorry,” said I. “No bread. I just came down here on an impulse.”

“We’ll survive,” he replied. “After all, we ducks do not live by bread alone.”

Right.

“Just explain to us,” asked the female on the left, “why George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are still in charge, quack, quack?  In our little world, one-legged liars just don’t cut it, know what I mean?”

I told her I did. I also told here that “Justice in the human world often doesn’t get delivered as quickly as in the duck world. Especially in a ‘democracy’ which has rules and regulations and procedures and timelines and elections!"

“You people are so pathetic,” said one of the guys on the right.  “They stole the 2000 election. Your Supreme Court stopped the Florida vote recount that would have put Al Gore in the White House. An inconvenient truth, eh?

“Then the Bush-Cheney ruling team makes up bold lies to con your Congress and your 'media' and your crazy population into believing wild lies about Iraq so they can justify an invasion in 2003. And the bloodbath continues. For what?”

"Good question," I replied.  "Look, I’ve always wished human brains were as smart as duck brains. C’est la vie. You play the cards and the species you’re dealt, right?”

“I hear ya,” quacked one of the dames on the left.

"But,” says I, “it’s not like all human brains are dysfunctional. You guys probably aren’t going to fly cross-state, but Monday at 7 p.m. there’s going to be a big Impeachment Teach-In at Dartmouth’s Moore Hall.

“Among the participants in this human reality-check are Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Nation magazine writer John Nichols and Newfane Selectman Dan DeWalt who started the impeachment ball rolling a couple years back with a Vermont Town Meeting Day resolution.

“Hey, guys, we’re only human,” I told them.

Quack, quack, quack...