Dora, Dora, Dora The Explorer

Ok, so if you don't have a mini 10-toer you probably don't know who Dora The Explorer is and you haven't had to put up with her irritating voice and pregnant pauses, but in our house Dora The Explorer is often on TV, speaking Spanish and..... exploring. The theme tune, the title of this post, is equally annoying, reverberating around your head for hours after you've heard it. However, since one of our ducks is named after her we are all in the habit of singing this song to Dora the duck, somehow expecting her to know what we're on about. Dora doesn't care, any attention means that we must be about to give her food and she quacks back at us in the hope that we've got something tasty.

Dora is an apricot runner and the biggest character in our paddling of ducks. Permanently hungry, fearless, and very quick, Dora doesn't miss a trick, watching the back of the house for signs of any movement of us 10-toers through the window. She also has amazing hearing and if I clatter about in the kitchen or run the tap for any length of time she'll stand on the back step and quack loudly until I open the back door, knowing that I'll give in a throw her a bit of bread. Dora is also very partial to slugs and snails; only last weekend I watched in amazement as she gulped down a whole snail which you could see going down her neck (due to the snail's large size and her thin neck). Dora has also been known to catch frogs which she gets particularly excited about, running off to the other side of the garden with it so that she can keep it to herself, the other ducks in hot pursuit (well, Daphne and Dave trying really hard!). Needless to say we have managed to rescue most of the frogs that she's caught, I'm not sure even Dora could manage to swallow a whole one. Dora is also the only one of the ducks to take food from our hands and is the fastest duck in the west when it comes to 'who can get to the bread first' when throwing it to all of them. Often, Dave, Dolly and Daphne get bored with trying and head back to the pond when they realise that they're not going to get a look in whilst Dora's about. Dora might not have much in common with her Spanish counterpart but she's definitely the star of the show in our back garden (I know you're not supposed to have favourites but........)