The Dynamic Duo

Did I snare you with the catchy title? I should hope so! I mean come on, who wouldn’t be interested in reading a post entitled “Followed by a Duck”? I dare you to name me ONE SINGLE PERSON!!! Sorry about that little outburst there… I don’t know what came over me. Just the natural giddiness of actually posting two days in a row I suppose… In any event I should get to the “meat” of this post before I lose the few of you that my masterfully-done headline drew in.

I was followed by a duck yesterday… Yes, it’s true. The scary thing is that I don’t quite know what his intentions were (I am assuming the gender of the duck, it seemed rather aggressive and knowing little about ducks I make an educated guess). It started out innocently enough, I was walking from this very computer lab on campus yesterday on my way to the library when I saw a duck walking across the lawn in my general direction. This is not an unusual event by any means, as our campus is directly adjacent to the Boise River, but I was amused nonetheless as it was the first duck of the season, so to speak. He was quacking in an unusual manner (again this is conjecture on my part as I am not qualified to state definitively what the usual manner of quacking is) so I stopped to smile and watch him for a moment.

Perhaps this duck had been having a bad day and did not like to be laughed at, or perhaps we have an ancient score to settle, which I have somehow forgotten about, but upon seeing me the duck changed his bearing until he was on a direct collision course with the John-Train! I thought this might be a coincidence and as the duck was showing no real anger in his walk (again, this is limited to my small knowledge of how a duck would walk when angry) I stayed for a moment to continue watching him. He simply stared back at me in a cool, Clint Eastwood-like manner and continued his march (waddle would be more accurate I suppose). In a moment or two the duck was only about 10 feet from me and closing at a steady pace so I decided that it was about time for me to be moving along, but the duck was not so easily dissuaded. As I began to move away from him he picked up his pace and his quacking became noticeably more agitated.

Perhaps he merely wanted to come and strike up a friendly conversation with me, but even if that was the case I was certain he would soon turn the conversation to “The UpsideDown Club” (for those of you who may not know, this is the local cult prevalent on the college campus) and his interest in seeing me join. All of the conversations I have had on campus with characters as….. interesting as the duck have followed this general M.O., so friendly conversation or not I wanted nothing to do with it.

Also, I could not be certain this Mallard did not have something far more sinister in mind. I recalled a FarSide cartoon that I had seen in which a mad scientist had done a brain transplant between the bodies of a man and a duck, and although the man-brain-in-duck-body went on to be a great leader among ducks in the cartoon, I had no great interest in repeating this experiment.

In any event, I quickly outpaced the duck and, realizing that he could not catch me, he turned (somewhat dejectedly) back towards the river and wandered off. In-and-of-itself this seems to be nothing more than an usual incident… but questions remain to be answered! Who was this duck, and what was his purpose? Who sent him? Will he be back in the future? Can I continute to safely walk across campus after dark? Just what exactly is the song “Mr. Roboto about? (this last question may not have been directly brought about through my encounter with the duck, but this has really been bugging me, so if you have any insight let me know!) Yes my friends, I fear that this is far from over. I must find out what this ducks knows and who he is working for ,and I think that tonight may be the night! I am going to leave the lab now and go to the library, employing all of my ninja stealth and prowess along the way. I leave this written record in the event that I mysteriously disappear into the shadowy depths of the river, never to be heard from again. If this happens I ask you to avenge my death, or at the very least send out a very competent chicken to handle the matter for you!

-John “Quackers” McDonald