“Where do the ducks go in the winter?”

“You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park south?That little lake?By any chance you happen to know where they go?The ducks,When it gets all frozen over?”

“Gundar seemed to come to a decision. "Well, as my old mam used to say, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's probably a duck." "Very wise," Halt said. "And what exactly do your mother's words of wisdom have to do with this situation?" Gundar shrugged. "It looks like a channel. It's the right place for a channel. If I were digging one, this is where I'd dig a channel. So. . ." "So it's probably the channel?" Selethen said. Gundar grinned at him. "Either that or it's a duck.”

“Where's my bed?!" Dairine shrieked."It's on Pluto," Nita said. "On the winter side, somewhere nice and dark and quiet, where you won't find it if you look all day-which you're not going to have time to do, becaus you'll be in school.”

“The park was a scruffy patch of grass, muddy in winter and dusty in summer, set about with a few dozen trees, a bandstand, and a pond on which swam a family of depraved and malevolent ducks.”

“Mr. Honeyfoot did not propose going quite so far --indeed he did not wish to go far at all because it was winter and the roads where very shocking.”