an interlude from all this academic nonsense

[truepenny]

So I had to take the car in today to get new tires (last got tires in 1996, so not before time, really). Which meant getting up at 7:30 so as to be at the dealership at 8.

So I'm up, dressed, vaguely coherent, driving along one of the busier 4-lane roads in town, when traffic comes to a halt. Up ahead there are two city employees, in their ugly orange vests with reflective tape, standing in the road to stop traffic ...

... so that a duck and her large brood of ducklings can get across the road to the lake in safety.

Just for a second I was four years old again, and I was in Make Way for Ducklings. I just sat there grinning like a fool, knowing that this was worth getting out of bed for.

The duck wasn't in any hurry, serenely confident that the humans would do what they were supposed to. And the beauty of it is that, yes, we were.

Every once in a while, human beings get something right.

Comments

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I love such moments. :)

The nice thing is they seem to be self-fueling. If one person in a neighborhood does it, other people will start doing it, until in one self-contained pocket of people it will be typical for there to be cars stopped while other people rush to the other side of the road clutching turtles, or a line of cars waiting for ducks to pass.

[larryhammer]

We have a couple mallards who regularly breed near the moat/pond that surrounds our office building. Two years ago, one (I think the one mated to two drakes) managed to raise six past the local cats and other dangers, until they could fly away. For several weeks, before they were flying, the daily routine was mornings across the boulevard to a hotel's fountain, then came back for afternoons and evenings here. At dawn, before the morning rush, 6 traffic lanes + 2 bus lanes + 2 turn lanes weren't busy; at the lunch rush, it's hidjous busy. Motorists would spontaneously stop for them, despite it being a commuter artery.

I too had flashbacks to Make Way for Ducklings. In between cringing.

---L.

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

It must be duck season. I dashed out the door for a much needed walk an hour ago, as soon as the rain stopped. I got about 4 blocks, and there, on a lawn in the middle of Minneapolis, were a duck and a drake, what looked to be a breeding pair. They were at least a dozen blocks from the Mississippi, and more than that from the nearest lake. I stood, marveling at these two, less than 10 feet away from me. If I'd had bread, they would have gotten it. A it was, all they got were my eyeballs for five minutes.

How do you say welcome to the neighborhood in duck?

[redbird]

Meanwhile, shortly before 7 this morning, cattitude and I were herding ducks.

There was a female duck, on the waist-high wall between the path and the bit of greenery next to the river there. That's not a usual place for ducks, and after a moment Cattitude figured it out: her seven ducklings were on the path, and she was trying to convince them to come up and join her.

They were trying, but new-hatched ducklings can't jump, or climb, that high, nor can they fly yet. We slowly and carefully walked along, so that Mama and the babies (and the drake who flew up to join her after a couple of minutes) would walk away from the road, and toward a footbridge where the wall ends and is replaced by a fence that a duckling can easily fit under.

It took a few minutes, and some cheerful conversation with neighbors (one of whom asked if the ducklings were ours), but they got to the bridge. The adults flew down to the water, and quacked (which I think is "follow me!" in duck). It took a moment, but one duckling after another jumped off, and there they all were, duck, drake, and seven ducklings, paddling happily on an inlet off the Hudson River.