Duckbunny

Crossbreeding is risky magic, so most fledgling wizards practice on something gentler than an owlbear. The duckbunny, made by merging a snowshoe hare with a duck, is the classic first lesson in fusing a mammal with a bird. With a duck's bill and webbed feet it looks like an odd sort of platypus, though its long rabbit ears rule out any confusion. Nearly all are white with big black eyes and orange-yellow bills and feet.

Duckbunnies run from trouble. If cornered, they nip at whatever fingers or noses come within reach, doing no damage at all. The bitten character must check for surprise, though; if surprised, the shock of being attacked by such a harmless creature costs him initiative next round, and the duckbunny uses the moment to escape.

Mostly they live like rabbits, digging burrows, eating plants and breeding prolifically. Their waterfowl half shows in the eggs they lay, the layer of downy feathers beneath their fur, their skill as swimmers, and the occasional small fish they snap up. Freed duckbunnies settle along ponds and small lakes. They will raid gardens as rabbits do, but most prefer water plants to the risks of a farmer's plot.

Anything that hunts rabbits, from cats to wolves, also hunts duckbunnies, and their waddle is far slower than a rabbit's bounding, so many die in the wild. Their best escape is to dive into the water and paddle away.

Now and then a duckbunny answers a find familiar spell. Familiars come worse, but few wizards are thrilled to see one waddle up after all that effort.

Though made as practice pieces, duckbunnies are genuinely useful. Their eggs taste wonderful and come in steady supply, their down-lined pelts make fine cloaks, capes and boots, and their meat makes a stew hard to tell from rabbit. Startled duckbunnies let out a loud quack, so more and more households keep them as a cheap alarm. A duckbunny will not bite a burglar the way a guard dog would, but its racket wakes the house and may scare the intruder off, and a lost one is easily replaced.

Above all, they are almost unbearably cute, with huge eyes, floppy ears and soft fluff. It is no accident that most wizards who craft them are fathers of little girls, and duckbunnies are excellent pets. Domestic ones live about ten years, wild ones far less, and those serving as familiars much longer.