The Saga of Solar Duck

In an earlier post, I lamented the unfortunate name given to a new lawn ornament - Solar Duck. Unfortunately, as it turns out, not only his name gave me grief. Solar Duck was not doing his job. He was not being solar. Oh, he was cute and all, and I still wanted to keep him, but Dave decided that if he wasn't going to glow in the dark, then he was going to be returned to the store. No free rides!

I'm lazy. I got as far as finding the receipt, but washing the duck off and bringing him all the way back to the store, was too much work. So he sat there for a few weeks, being a lovely but non-glowing garden ornament.

As it turns out, my laziness was actually fate intervening on Solar Duck's behalf. While at Sears looking for patio furniture, I saw a shelf full of solar creatures. No ducks, but the cats and butterflies and frogs were definitely made in the same style as our defective little guy, so I picked one up, and saw that it had a big square tag attached to it. A big square tag with instructions on it. Which, naturally, ours was missing when we bought it. Yeah, it seems there's a plastic thing inside him with a switch on it, which needs to be switched to - get this - ON, before it will glow. I popped Solar Duck open and fixed the switch that morning as soon as we got home, and sure enough, that night, we had a blue glowing duck in the front garden.

He works really well, too, staying blue almost all night. It's a good little solar cell he has in his butt.