Learning #2: Always bring a towel

1) I knew there was a reason I always loved "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

2) I don't eat duck anymore.

3) A police car often sits in a somewhat hidden pullout at the bottom of the 101 North Hillsdale onramp in San Mateo, waiting to trap hapless speeders and carpool meter lane violators.

What could these three things have in common, you ask?

Duck. A Mama duck, to be exact, and her babies. Like, a lot of babies. Little fuzzy ones.

I reflect on the fact that I don't eat duck anymore pretty much every time I see a police car or two at the bottom of that onramp. And here's why:

One Saturday morning, I had to go into the office (San Mateo). After the office I hit the gym, and after the gym I headed up Hillsdale to head home so that I could get ready for dinner in San Francisco.

Things were proceeding as planned until I hit the arcing onramp that makes a 180 degree turn onto 101, and suddenly everyone was hitting their breaks at the beginning of the curve. I jogged left into the carpool lane (thanks, Prius HOV stickers) and then saw that a silver Mercedes had stopped with the hazards on.

It was then that I realized why the driver had stopped: a mother duck and a huge... um, litter? gaggle? ... of ducklings had tried to cross the freeway onramp and was now trapped up against the retaining wall with nowhere to go.

On the drop over the wall is a freeway offramp/street. On another side is 101. And up the ramp is E. Hillsdale, which is a busy street on its own. I have no idea where the heck this duck came from or how she came to be in the carpool lane on this onramp (to be fair, she had more than enough passengers to earn her the right of passage), but this was most assuredly not the place for a duck crossing.

Resigned to possibly making myself a bit late for dinner, I stopped the car on the carpool lane shoulder, flicked the hazards on and tried to figure out what to do. The woman who'd already stopped jumped out of her car to divert traffic around us and the ducks.

Fortunately, we were towards the top of the onramp and in very full view of anyone entering the onramp, so it's not like we threw ourselves into the middle of 60 MPH traffic or anything. However, we did have the odd problem of figuring out how to safely collect a Mom duck and her... um, brood?... and then figuring out what the heck to do with them.

The woman was on the phone with 911 and was freaking out in the way that diamond-studded Peninsula ladies do so well, so I figured I'd better get to the business of collecting some very young, very fuzzy, very cute ducklings.  

Upside:  They were wee little fuzzy things who couldn't remotely fly, making potential duckling wrangling seem a lot more manageable than it might have been otherwise.

Downside:  Mom was not happy about her situation, as evidenced by her... honking? quacking? squawking?.., which caused me momentary pause while I considered whether or not Mama ducks are prone to aggressive attack when they've unwittingly led their babies to be trapped against a freeway wall and some crazy human decides to interfere.

I must admit, it was at this point that I wished I had a net. But there wasn't much time to regret such equipment absence - the babies and Mom were in imminent danger of being squashed if they decided to bolt, and Mom was squawking away and about as agitated as the gal on the phone.

At this point I figured I'd better try to save the babies first seeing as how Mom probably wouldn't leave them. This of course had to be accomplished without getting myself attaked by an angry duck, or - worse - leading Mom to fly either away or into oncoming traffic to her demise, thus leaving me with 13 orphaned ducklings. Which is the last thing I need. Seriously. 4 dogs is more than enough pets, thanks.

I would, at this point, like to thank Whole Foods for providing sturdy paper shopping bags that I keep in my car to re-use when I grocery shop. In addition to providing a good re-usable bag alternative, it turns out that Whole Foods bags are also good for providing quality, earth-friendly temporary duckling housing.

So, task 1 was completed: ducklings were safe in the Whole Foods bag, cheep cheep cheeping away and letting Mom know where they were.

Mom, on the other hand, would not come so easily.

Without going into huge detail, let's just say that trying to catch an adult duck who's surrounded by busy streets full of potentially fatal traffic is not the easiest thing in the world. Here's what I learned:

1. Don't try to use your gym towel to catch an adult duck. It will fly away from it. You're just too slow. And you will look and feel silly.
2. Ditto to your gym bag.
3. Mama ducks will stay with their ducklings, even when their ducklings are in the footwell of a Prius on a freeway onramp. They'll also follow you around if you carry that bag and try to lure them out of traffic.
4. Baby ducks are sinfully cute and are generally content to hang out in the bottom of a Whole Foods bag. However, there are always those few bastard babies that will try to jump out of the bag (or your hands), so if you're going to try to lure Mom with a single baby in your hand you should choose one of the mellow ones that's hanging out sleeping with some siblings, rather than the jumping cheeping one.
5. Ducks won't get into your car willingly. Even if you put their bag o' babies in your footwell. Instead they'll keep running under your car and out the other side again and again, thus making you look like a complete jackass to oncoming traffic. And to any other passing ducks, probably.
6. Ducks don't actually have much in the way of human-harming weaponry. They have bills, not beaks. So the best course of action to catch a duck is to get over the fear of the duck and grab it without hurting it. They're not as ill-tempered as geese (nor nearly as large), so just go for it. Carefully.
7. To grab an adult duck, you probably need more than one person. Try to corner the duck up against a high surface, since ducks can't fly straight up. Then grab the duck (gentle - it's a bird, and birds are fragile) and hold it close, trying to contain the wings.
8. The gym towel that made such a poor net makes a really good police uniform stain shield, if you happen to get an officer in your passenger seat holding a frantic Mama duck and that officer is afraid of spoiling his uniform with duck poop. Indeed, your gym towel can serve and protect.

#5 - #8 are what happened once the police showed up and got done with screaming at us for blocking traffic.

Now, to be fair, the babies being in a Whole Foods bag in my footwell meant that to all passerbys and the cops it looked like 2 crazy ladies were running around a freeway onramp chasing a duck that can clearly fly away on its own.

However, I'd just spent 45 minutes trying to wrangle a very frantic Mama duck. This had included hopping the retaining wall when she flew over, diverting traffic when she flew into the iceplant onramp median, luring her out of traffic various times with a bag full of babies, and trying various ridiculous "come here, ducky ducky!" calls to get her into my car while having horrible images of being the guardian of 13 orphaned ducks who were going to imprint on me and follow me forever. And it was hot. And now I was running late. So being confronted by a screeching, red-faced police officer that looked all of 19 years old wasn't exactly what I had in mind.

After cussing at Opie (as this officer will now be known), the other lady took off. My response to Opie also regrettably included a big fat curse word, which I fortunately delivered while revealing the inside of the bag. He took a peek in and was met with a view that looked something like this photo, at which point he lightened up and told me that I needed to move my car to the somewhat hidden pullout at the bottom arc of the ramp.

Problem: Mom duck was still up at the top of the onramp. Opie, though, quickly solved this conundrum by making a clumsy grab for her, causing her to panic and fly over the retaining wall and into oncoming traffic on the street side.

Awesome.

Fortunately, Mama then flew out of traffic and onto the sidewalk next to the retaining wall. And we were back to square 1. Well, OK, maybe we'd reached square 1.a. - she was on the other side of the wall, after all.

So, the new situation:

Mama duck's against a wall. I'm holding a Whole Foods bag o' cheeping ducklings. Cars (we had 2 squad cars) are tucked safely in the bus lane. And now I'm watching 2 rookie cops look at each other and say "What are we supposed to do now?"

It was at this point I realized that these two needed a pep talk. So I tried to give them the best one I had in me, which contained phrases like "You can do it!" and "I'm sure it'll be fine!" and "She's a duck, not a Mama bear - could be worse," all the while convincing them that they really, really, really needed to catch Mom so that the babies wouldn't pull a "Fly Away Home" on me.

Finally, Opie got over his fear of being attacked and managed to grab Mom up against the wall.

After securing her wings we decided that he should probably just get into my car and I'd drive everyone to the park, which was the best place we could think of for the ducks. I mean, her duck husband is presumably in Foster City somewhere (and where was he during this crisis, hmm? Out drinking at the Mallard?) so I didn't want to take her too far away. Plus I don't think Opie was up for a long-distance duck relocation commute, what with having left his squad car in a bus turnout and seeing as how he was holding an angry Mama duck, who thanked him for lending his lap by pecking him and trying to fly out of his arms every few minutes.

And right then, watching Opie wrastle with that duck in my passenger seat and wondering if he could get his seatbelt on (answer: no), I decided to name the duck Matilda. I don't know why, but the sight of a baby-faced rookie cop being pecked repeatedly by a flapping angry duck just made me go "Matilda, stop trying to attack the officer!" And so it was.

So, with babies and a duck-wrastlin' cop and Matilda in my Prius, we headed off to the park with a police escort behind us.  It was at this point that I lent the officer my gym towel, since he told me that his "tans" are dry-clean only and we figured Matilda might poop on him out of fear. Or spite. Or both.

And that's how it came to be that the park-hangin' denizens of Foster City were greeted with the assuredly odd sight of a police officer holding an angry, flapping duck (he'd lost his hold on her wings) while being escorted from a Prius by a girl carrying a Whole Foods bag.

He put Matilda down on the lawn, and I scooped out various loads of babies and put them on the lawn, whereupon they waddled over to a very relieved Mama. After lecturing Matilda for her poor choice in duck crossings, I left.

And I still thought I could make dinner. Except that when I got home it turned out that one of my dogs had pulled a Houdini out of a completely fenced yard to explore the neighborhood, and my 'hood is also surrounded by busy streets that make a very poor dog crossing.

So I then spent the next 90 minutes trying to find a rogue exploring dog, who ended up coming home on his own and wondering what the big deal was. But that's another story. And it's boring, except for the part about how he created a trick board in the fence that swung open with his nose and then swung back into place once he was through, thus leaving me scratching my head to wonder how in the holy hell this dog was getting out of the yard.

But I just told you the interesting part, so there you have it. Two animal adventure stories in one.

And since there's two stories, I should add another lesson I learned:

Lesson #3:

Animals are smarter than us sometimes. But it's OK, because it keeps us humble.