The Demon Ducks from Hell

This incident took place when I was attending a Residential School at the Uni I was attending.  The dormitories were rather unattractive concrete box shaped buildings situated approximately a mile away from the campus.  There was a bus you could catch, or you could walk through a lovely park, where there were all sorts of lovely trees, birds and animals, introduced and native.  Guess which option I chose?

Each morning after a lovely breakfast I would set off along one of the various paths, admiring all the flora and fauna.  In an enclosure I could see some deer, and a fairly elderly kangaroo.  I’m sure if he’d wanted to he could have jumped the fence….the deer probably could have too, but I suppose they were quite happy with their lot, because they looked very well fed.  There were rabbits hopping around, and different birds in the trees, and several different types of ducks, and ibises and spoonbills wandering around as well.   I reckoned they were pretty used to people, because they used to ignore me completely…..until the last morning at least.  Then I met two little wood ducks.  They are fairly small sized ducks, grey and brown in colour, and they were just alongside the path I was walking on, “talking” to each other as I approached.  Then the little male rushed towards me, wings extended, and head and neck out in a typical aggressive pose.  He was hissing for all he was worth, and I couldn’t help myself, I just stopped and burst out laughing.  I had never experienced such behaviour before……he wouldn’t have stood much more that a foot high, and here he was taking me on.  I think it came as a bit of a shock to him that I wasn’t intimidated because as soon as he realised I wasn’t going to run away screaming, he immediately stopped, and actually looked embarrassed.  He went back to his mate, talking the whole way, and it really sounded as though he was apologising, and probably blaming his wife for the whole thing.  She in the mean time was scolding him, so perhaps he WAS henpecked, and he really was acting on instructions…or perhaps they had a nest.

I found out later that the Wood Duck is also called the Maned Duck, or Maned Goose, and is actually a type of goose, and if you are being harrassed by a goose the correct thing to do is to stand and call their bluff.  So unwittingly I had done the right thing, although it wasn’t from bravery……