Summary
Philip and William reiterate that they do not wish to eat worms. Mr Gregg says that it will not be necessary. He says they do not need to eat bird food. He says that they can eat apples instead. He adds that there are many apple trees nearby. They fly off to an apple tree.
They struggle to eat the apple with no hands. They only manage to get a few small bits of it. They head back to the nest and go to sleep.
The narrator telephones the Greggs. Someone picks up the phone and she says hello. A duck answers and quacks at her. She asks if it's Philip. The duck quacks several more times. The duck seems to begin laughing. Distraught, the narrator hangs up. She wonders aloud what has happened to her friends as a result of her magic finger.
In the nighttime, a fierce wind blows through the trees. Then it begins to rain. The nest gets very wet and the Greggs have a bad evening. Morning arrives. The sky is clear and the sun is out. Mrs Gregg remarks on what a lovely day it is. She says she's glad that the storm passed, as she got very little sleep. Then she peers over the side of the nest and cries out for help. She says they all need to look down.
Mr Gregg asks what's going on. They look over the side. They see the human-sized ducks pointing their guns up at them. Mr and Mrs Gregg both call out, asking them not to shoot. The ducks ask why they shouldn't, as the Greggs are always shooting at them. Mr Gregg says that is different, as they are "allowed" to shoot at ducks. The duck asks who allows him. Mr Gregg says they allow each other.
The duck says they will now "allow" each other to shoot the Greggs. Mrs Gregg begs them to not shoot, saying surely they wouldn't shoot her children. One duck, the mother duck, says that just the day before they shot all six of her children. Mr Gregg says he will never do it again. He gives them his word and vows to destroy his guns.
The ducks allow them to come down and say that they built a good nest, for a first try. The Greggs hop out of their nest and onto the ground. Suddenly they are unable to see anything and hear a rush of wind between their ears. The forest changes colors rapidly before their eyes and then they are transported back to their garden. They open their eyes and see everything has returned to normal.
Analysis
Magic plays an important role in this section of the book. The narrator picks up the phone and hears quacking on the other end. She wonders if this might be some joke Philip is playing on her, but quickly comes to realize this is not the case. Frightened, she hangs up the phone and worries about what she has done. While the reader can appreciate how her magic has righted the scales of justice, the narrator is primarily concerned. She worries she has repeated the Mrs Winter debacle.
Violence is also a major theme in these pages. In a complete reversal, the Greggs are suddenly at the mercy of their own weapons. The ducks point their guns up at their nest. The Greggs fear for their lives and desperately beg not to be shot. The ducks seem to enjoy pointing out the hypocrisy of the Greggs' actions: they previously loved guns, but are now frightened by them when they are pointing in a different direction. When the threat of violence becomes real, the Greggs are no longer interested in treating the act of hunting as recreation. Seeing this violence up close finally forces them to understand things from a different point of view.
Morality is also a key theme in this section. The ducks ask the Greggs why they shouldn’t shoot them, as they used to shoot ducks all the time. Mr Gregg responds that that was different, as they were allowed to do that. The ducks ask who allowed them. Mr Gregg says that they allowed each other, and the duck, mocking the ridiculousness of that claim, says they will simply do the same kind of “allowing” when they shoot them. The duck mocking Mr Gregg is important in that it lays bare how hollow Mr Gregg's beliefs about the natural world are. He thinks that he simply should be allowed to kill things because he enjoys doing it for sport. When faced with the prospect of being a victim of this same brand of brutality, he comes to recognize the damage that he has done for no other reason than his own enjoyment.
Empathy is also an important theme in this part of the book. As the ducks seem ready to fire their guns, Mrs Gregg says that they surely wouldn’t shoot her children. The mother duck, who is not brandishing a gun, says that the day before the Greggs shot all six of her children. Without being overly direct, she is asking why they should show any mercy when the Greggs did not extend a similar mercy to her children. In this moment, Dahl makes heartbreakingly clear how much damage has been wrought by the Greggs. What was just sport to them is nothing less than the murder of precious children to the mother duck. This is the book’s climax, as its moral is made apparent. The mother duck’s tragic comment forces the Greggs to see what they’ve done.
This part of the book is its dramatic and moral climax. The Greggs are finally confronted with a direct threat to their lives. In being pushed to this limit, they are required to re-examine the impact of their hunting and see how it has caused irreparable pain to this family of ducks.
