“Small men oft feel a need to prove their courage with unseemly boasts,” he declared. “I doubt if he could kill a duck.”
Tyrion shrugged. “Fetch the duck.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
Bachman Lake, Dallas, Texas
Fetch the Duck
Tag Archives: duck
Ramp
“He takes a kitchen chair and sits in the yard and all the ducks come around. He holds up the cheese curls in one hand and caramel popcorn in the other and his audience looks up and he tells them a joke. He says: So one day a duck come into this bar and ordered a whiskey and a bump and the bartender was pretty surprised, he says, “You know we don’t get many of you ducks in here.” The duck says, “At these prices I’m not surprised.* And he tosses out the popcorn and they laugh. ‘Wak wak wak wak wak. I was shot in the leg in the war.’ Have a scar? ‘No thanks, I don’t smoke.”
― Garrison Keillor, Truckstop and Other Lake Wobegon Stories
There’s a park at the end of my block with a couple of flood-control ponds (the drainage from the ponds runs in a creek/ditch behind my house). Despite their utility in times of rain and excessive urban runoff they are quite attractive.
My neighborhood is called Duck Creek, because of the eponymous body of water that runs diagonally through the place, but there are also plenty of ducks. This is the time of year that the baby ducks are hatched and groups of them are herded around by their parents.
The problem is that there is a little, low dam at the end of the ponds. The water flows over it – during the summer it’s not much more than a trickle. Unfortunately, often a baby duck gets swept over this dam and separated from their loving duck family. They can’t get back over the dam, even though it isn’t more than a couple feet high.
The rest of the ducks then have to go over the dam to rescue their sibling. Then they have to waddle up the bank and cross a fairly busy street to get back into the pond.
People in my neighborhood have been complaining to the city about this and today, I discovered that there is a new construction project going. The city is making a concrete duckling ramp so that they can get up and over that low dam.
Excuse all the trash in the photo – it tends to collect there – a crew comes by periodically to pick it up.
I’ll go back in a few days, once the wooden forms are removed and see if the little ducks are actually using their ramp – I’m sure they will. Maybe the turtles will too. I’m sure the snakes will.
Does this count as infrastructure?
Behold the Hands
“Behold the hands, how they promise, conjure, appeal, menace, pray, supplicate, refuse, beckon, interrogate, admire, confess, cringe, instruct, command, mock and what not besides, with a variation and multiplication of variation which makes the tongue envious.”
―
Tatoo Shop Storefront, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Be A Duck
“Be a duck, remain calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath.”
― Michael Caine
Bachman Lake, Dallas, Texas
The Dawn Remaking the World
“Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.”
― The Picture of Dorian Gray
A duck at dawn, Bachman Lake, Dallas, Texas
Water Off A Duck’s Back
“-Hey, listen,” I said. “You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you happen to know, by any chance?” I realized it was only one chance in a million.”
― The Catcher in the RyeBachman Lake, Dallas, Texas
I watched the ducks go about their start of the day routine from a bench along the water at dawn. One ritual was to repeatedly duck under the water and rise up – letting the water run off their feathers. Like taking a little duck shower.
Very Secure In the Pond That You Are In
“We can’t be afraid of change. You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean, a sea. Holding onto something that is good for you now, may be the very reason why you don’t have something better.”
―
Pond at the end of my block, Huffhines Park, Richardson, Texas
Seven in Seven
Where are we going? Life, the timeless, mysterious gift, is still evolving. What wonders, or terrors, does evolution hold in store for us in the next ten thousand years? In a million? In six million? Perhaps the answer lies in this old house in this old and misty valley…
—-Control Voice, The Outer Limits, The Sixth Finger
Oblique Strategy: Use Fewer Notes
I am not a fan of internet memes, challenges, viral videos, cat images, or Rick Ashtley.
However, when I was invited to do the “Seven ‘Days, Seven Black and White Photos” on Facebook, I decided to do the thing.
Because I wanted to.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
The Secret of Magic
“Learning the secret of flight from a bird was a good deal like learning the secret of magic from a magician.”
― Orville Wright
Little Arkansas River, Wichita, Kansas
Racing the Wind
White Rock Lake, Dallas, Texas
“hark, now hear the sailors cry,
smell the sea, and feel the sky
let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic…”
― Van Morrison
“Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Bill Chance 