Winter. A duck struggles mightily, and finally hatches her eggs in the bitter cold, after candling them and seeing the chicks skiing, skating, and otherwise enjoying winter inside the shells. All but one, that is: poor little Robespierre. She doesn’t notice until after the rest of the brood has gone swimming and Robespierre has sprouted legs and run off in search of warmth. He finds it, under a hibernating bear (“So I laid an egg”), but a wolf has followed him in and snatches the egg, with some help from a stick of TNT. What the wolf hasn’t counted on is mama, who’s right behind him, with a couple of eye-poking fingers at the ready. The wolf swaps a doorknob for the egg, and starts boiling the egg, but mama arrives in the nick of time only to be rejected by the baby, who was just getting warm.
