BCDB: Cartoon Reviews: The Little Stranger

This story has an odd twist on the Ugly Duckly tale. In this case, a mother hen sneaks her egg into another nest under the cover of the night. This suggests that this is an out-of-wedlock child, as the mother hen exits in fained embarrassment. It turns out that the nest the orphaned egg is left in is a duck's nest, and the mother has left momentarily for a midnight swim. She returns to the nest, and the next morning, all the eggs hatch. All of the ducklings take to their natural instincts such as swimming. But the baby chick, not having webbed feet nearly drowns. The mother duck, notices the chick's lack of webbed feet, and rigs up a set of flippers from some leaves. All is fine until after a few strokes, the leaves work themselves off, and the chick sinks again. The mother duck rescues the chick again and sends it away. Wanting to be part of the group, the chick takes half of its eggshell and uses it as a boat. Now he is able to paddle with his wings and follow along with the rest of the ducks. Suddenly a grotesque vulture swoops down and chases the ducks. The little chick can not paddle fast enough, and reaching the shore runs into an old barn with the vulture following him. But being small enough, the chick is able to leap though holes that the vulture cannot pass through. When the chick jumps through the center of a wagon wheel, the vulture gets stuck, and goes on a wild trip with the wheel spinning out of control, crashing through apple barrels and walls, and landing in the pond, forming a little Merry-Go-Round for the frogs. For defeating the vulture, the chick is now an honorary duck, and the ducks crow like a rooster in his honor. Another charming cartoon with nice uses of three-dimensional backgrounds.