SO - yesterday, my brother Ryan and I went for a walk with our 8 month old niece Jade to go see the duck pond on the south end of campus. When we got there, we took Jade out of the stroller and stood there chatting, watching the 30 some-odd ducks chasing after bread crumbs and each other (I don't know if you knew this, but ducks can get pretty vicious when competing for bread crumbs!).
Apparently, unbeknownst to me, duck mating season had begun. We saw two different duck couples mating in the water. It's always a bit of an unexpected surprise when you see animals mate. Anyway, there were a few 12 or 13 year old boys feeding bread crumbs to the ducks. One of them saw one of the duck couples getting, shall we say, "romantic," and he pointed at them, calling to his friends, "Hey! There's a duck that's drowning, and that other duck is trying to save him! Look! No, wait, that duck is trying to drown that other duck! Look, he's drowning him!!" For some mysterious reason, I was afraid of trying to correct the kid and let him know what was really going on. I was afraid that all that would come out would have been, "No, kid, those ducks are doing it!!" So, I figured I would let it slide.
It turned out okay in the end, anyway. Almost as the kid was yelling about the duck and its homicidal intentions, one of his friends ran over to him, yelling, "No, I think they're mating!" After he said that, for a quick second, I mentally slapped myself on the forehead, thinking, "Whoa! That was a much better way of breaking it to him! Good job, kid, for not making it sound perverted, like I was going to."
Seriously, sometimes I just can't believe myself.
