It was a
pompous-looking creature. It came out waddling.
"It's the up-and-under bird," exclaimed Judy in a whisper.
"Something's happening!"
It was a water-fowl, a creature whose mysterious habit of living upon
the surface of the pond as well as underneath made the children's
nick-name a necessity. And now it was attempting a raid on land as
well. But land was not its natural place. Something certainly had
happened, or was going to happen.
"It's a snopportunity," decided Judy instantly. Far more than an
opportunity, a snopportunity was something to be snapped up quickly,
the sort of thing that ordinarily happened behind one's back, usually
discovered too late to be made use of. "I've caught it!" She
remembered that the clocks had stopped, yet not knowing why she
remembered it. It was the thing she didn't know she knew. She knew it
before it happened. That was a snopportunity.
She watched the heavy bird for a considerable time as it slowly
appropriated the land it had no right to. It moved, she thought, like
a twisted drum on very short drumsticks. It had a water-logged
appearance. It was bird and fish ordinarily, but now it was pretending
to be animal as well--a thing that flew, swam, walked.
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