Books, Bikes, and Baby Ducks

Here's a collection of random happenstances. Or should it be happenings? I'm not really sure.

The other day in my Print Publishing class, we were talking about the layouts of books and how usually books have a running header, in which the author's name is on one page and the book title is on the opposite page. This reminded me of my first experience with Ender's Game. I was young, I think maybe ten or eleven. We were living in Texas at the time, and Matt was reading the book. I hadn't read it yet, so all I knew about the book was what I could glean from the cover (which wasn't much. Have you seen the front cover of Ender's Game? It's this long side shot of a rectangular spaceship with some distant stars in the background, only you can't tell it's a spaceship because, well, it's a rectangle. It's an awful cover, really.)

Anyway, so I can remember sitting next to Matt in church one Sunday while he's reading the book. He was leaning forward, so I could see the running header at the top of each page. "Orson Scott Card" on one side and "Ender's Game" on the other. For some reason, this confused the daylights out of me. I thought Matt was reading some sort of card game inscructional manual. The fact that the running header sounded like some convoluted card game rather than an author and a book title was just too much for my little brain to handle. After Matt finished reading the book, Dad handed it to me and told me I'd probably like it. I read the book, and things started to make sense. Five or six years later, I read the book again and wondered why on Earth Dad would have encouraged a girl in fifth or sixth grade to read a book with that much profanity. Haha.

Random Happenstance Number Two: Baby Ducks

Now that I live south of campus, I live in close proximity to the duck pond, which is pretty much the best thing in the world now that there are baby ducks in abundance. (Random note: when ever I see the word abundance, I think of a bun dancing. It's kind of awesome.) Anyway, I was walking up to school a little early today in an effort to reclaim my seat from the older woman who likes to use it as a storage unit for her giant suitcase/backpack and her visor. I'm trotting up the hill, enjoying my iPod and the sunshine and my owl-sunglasses, when ahead of me I see a Mama Duck and an entire flock of little baby ducks. The little baby ducks were past their bright yellow stage of development (are baby ducks bright yellow for the same reason Mom and Dad made us wear white hats when we went to Disney World? Think about it), and were cute and brown with little yellow bits on them. I think they were learning how to walk, because some of them were REALLY struggling moving their tiny duck feet without tripping. One in particular seemed to develop really good somersaulting skills.

So I'm smitten by these baby ducks, and I pull out my camera on my iPod and start snapping pictures. The whole time, people are walking past me like I'm some sort of nutcase, and I wanted to shake them all and tell them to appreciate the ducklings! Mama Duck herded them away from me (I guess she thought I was a nutcase too) and I started my trek back up to campus. I walked slowly and kept glancing over my shoulder because they were just SO FLIPPIN' CUTE! I really couldn't stand it. Anyway, when I look over my shoulder, this one baby duck fluffs out his little wings and charges straight at me. For such a little guy, he was a pretty fast runner. When he's about a couple feet from me, he trips over himself, does a somersault, and is then back on his feet and resuming his charge. He stops right at my feet and chirps at me in the most adorable baby duck quacking noise.

I swear, I just about melted from cuteness overload. Once he's done chirping at me, he runs back to the Mama Duck, and once he gets there, one of his little brother ducks decides he also wants to be my friend and ran right up to me and chirped at me some more. I thought I was going to DIE. THAT'S HOW CUTE IT WAS. And I'm looking around at all the other people, and they weren't even paying attention to the ADORABLE BABY DUCKS who were trying to become my friends. (Bethany pointed out to me that the baby ducks might have been trying to scare me off, but, as she said, there's really nothing less scary than an adorable baby duck . . . except for maybe a tulip.)

Basically, my heart has been stolen by adorable baby ducks, and I'm okay with this.

Another Story on Ducklings

Tonight, Bethany and I went to the duck pond because I was eager to see my new baby duck friends. The pond was crowded with turtles, aloof Papa Ducks, attentive Mama Ducks, a clan of almost-tweener ducks, my friends the baby ducks and their less courageous sibilings, and one tiny lonesome baby yellow duck, hereafter known as Little Yellow.

Bethany and I were naturally very concerned for Little Yellow because he didn't seem to have any siblings or even a Mama or Papa duck. Whenever he would swim near the other baby ducks or the almost-tweener ducks, they would swim away. One almost-tweener duck snapped at Little Yellow and a Mama Duck chased him away when he followed her around. I was terrified that Little Yellow was all alone in the world and everytime another Mama Duck landed in the pond, I hoped it was his Mama Duck.

It never was.

Slowly, word got around the duck pond that there was a history behind Little Yellow. (He was, of course, everyone's favorite topic of conversation. I can't blame anything. He basically looked like a living Peep and was absurdly adorable.) Little Yellow had been rescued from the highway with his family by a girl called Heather. She stopped traffic and collected the ducks and brought them to the duck pond. Which is all good and well--I don't support duck fatalities on the highway--but there was a problem. Where was the rest of his little duck family? Why wasn't his Mama Duck still in the pond, nursing her little babies after the traumatic highway incident?

Then the girl called Heather arrived and informed her flock of admirers that she had already removed the other ducks and baby ducks she had rescued from the highway and taken them to her apartment. She was back now to collect Little Yellow and his sibling (who had mysteriously disappeared). Now, my question is, why would you rescue a bunch of ducks from the highway and take them to a lovely living environment, ONLY to take them AWAY from said environment and to your apartment? Further more, why on earth would you leave two HELPLESS baby ducks in a pond without their Mama Duck? NOT COOL. My feelings for this Heather girl are very mixed.

Also at the duck pond was a crazy Mama Duck. At one point, my baby duck friends and their baby duck siblings had a little duck huddle on this log. They were super adorable and were all huddled together in a heap of baby duck feathers. They're just hanging out there for five or ten minutes, when all of a sudden, this Mama Duck swoops in and goes crazy on them! She shoves them all off the log, and (I kid you not) had caught one of them in her beak and just held on while he panicked with little duck quacks. He squirmed for a bit and finally got away and swam as fast as he could to his siblings, all the while chirping like he'd just had ten years scared off of him (which he probably did). And then the crazy Mama Duck doesn't even sit on the log herself. She just gets back in the water.

A note on riding my bike around Provo:

No matter what I say or do, whenever I'm coming up on a pedestrian walking on the sidewalk who either can't see me or doesn't notice me, they always immediately jump IN FRONT of me before dodging to the side. I've nearly taken down three or four pedestrians because, even if I warn them what side I'm on or if they're walking toward me and look up and see me, they always jump in front of me before realizing they've done something wrong. Weird.

That is all.