"A Lesson for Ducklings" by Nicholas B. Morris looks into the brutal realities of nature.
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Nicholas B. Morris grew up in Arkansas but fell in love with Colorado. His stories and other assorted writings have been published in The Harpoon Review, Cliterature, Connotation Press, Danse Macabre Online, and Nebo. He has published two short story collections, the full-length Tapeworm and the chapbook The Boy in the Well, both with the now sadly defunct Monkey Puzzle Press. (You can buy copies of Tapeworm from him directly on Amazon.) He works in his dream job as Assistant Professor of Humanities at the Community College of Denver and watches endless re-runs of Star Trek with his partner Alyssa Piccinni.
Mr. Morris tweets at @totallynotNickM.
Caleb Hicks produced the original audio for the narrative. He and Mr. Morris worked closely together on the spoke album of Mr. Morris’s stories called The Boy in the Well.
The backing tracks for this story were taken from MusOpen at musopen.org. Musopen is a 501(c)(3) non-profit focused on increasing access to music by creating free resources and educational materials. They provide recordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions. As they say, their mission is to set music free. The track used here is “When You Last Say Goodbye” by York Bowen. MusOpen lists this track as anonymously uploaded. A sincere thank you to MusOpen.org for the contribution. This track is being used under a Public Domain Mark 1.0 license.