You wouldn't believe this if you read it in a book.

[Meerkat]

What if I told you . . .

That there are actually human beings who have made it to their sixties . . .

Who dispute the notion . . .

That if you put a male duck and a female duck in a coop together . . .

Baby ducks happen.

Yes.

Again: They do not believe that male ducks and female ducks make baby ducks. When I explained to these people that this is, in actuality, a proven scientific fact that has been well-accepted for oh, hundreds of thousands of years . . . they told me . . . "you're wrong, that's not how it happens."

I have no words, and THIS is why my mind has become frayed around the edges.

Could you guys stamp my parking ticket here? I'm not crazy, right? They're the loopy tunes ones, right? Guys?

 

[Marc Joan]

Eh? Don't you know about storks and gooseberry bushes?

 

[Kitty]

I have to ask - where do they think ducklings come from if it's not from a duck and a drake?

 

[Katie-Ellen]

They don't watch, do they? Don't use the eyes in their head. It's Sex City out on the pond here, right now. The drakes have gone seasonally crazy, hunting the ducks, who are harassed and exhausted, and while they are fending off a desperate drake, a seagull is also liable to make off with a new duckling. It's not the drake's fault. It's easy to feel angry at them but they are harassed too, driven by this overpowering imperative, because survival is a number's game.

Sad duck story here, true reading from my Tarot blog.

True Tarot Tales

 

[Meerkat]

They think that duck eggs are fertilised in a manner like fish eggs.

I explained that if you have a male duck and a female duck, and the duck lays an egg, then chances are good the egg is fertilised.

The lady member of this pair spake thusly: "Oh, no, we pick the eggs up right away -- they don't have time to be fertilised."

 

[Madeleine Conway]

Male ducks are really very sexually aggressive from what I've seen - most vivid was our experience staying beside a lake in Austria when Minion 2 was on the cusp of 7 years old. We went for a walk and there were ducks at it all over the place, mostly 2 or more going for the same hapless female. M2 was shocked and horrified, especially when 12-year old Minion 1 said, 'hmmm, it's all a bit rapey'. Just find some mating ducks and surely the scales will fall from the eyes of the duck-sex-deniers. Out of curiosity, what do they think happens when you put a Daddy Duck in with a Mummy Duck? Some snuggling together is enough for eider-down production?

 

[J. Rook]

They don't watch, do they? Don't use the eyes in their head. It's Sex City out on the pond here, right now. The drakes have gone
Sad duck story here, true reading from my Tarot blog.
True Tarot Tales

That's a lovely story. The pathos of nature.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Too much, sometimes, isn't it, J Il Matrimonio brought in another, two hours ago *sigh* It was on its back he said, and couldn't get up. Anyway, it's been warmed and fed and has been reunited with its mother and surviving siblings. Good luck, little duckling.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

It's just another level of the comment of a university educated colleague in his mid-20s who said, after getting his girlfriend pregnant, "I didn't know you could get a girl pregnant if you didn't want to." (This after his older brother had done exactly the same thing a few years before...) Um...what rock have you been hiding under? Actually, I know the answer to that--it was a religious rock they were under. Seems their church thought that if you deny sexuality exists, the normal laws of biology don't apply to you.

But, seriously, I can't think of an animal so publicly randy as ducks! How could you not see! They've even got a penis (unlike most birds, that are cloacal)!

 

[Meerkat]

@Robinne Weiss Oh. Wow. Well, I see this is not a local phenomenon, then.

After the cited pair told me this about how they thought duck eggs are fertilised, I did explain to them that that wasn't quite how it works and that ducks, do, in fact, get up to business. One of them (don't remember which) insisted that the ducks in question "don't do that, because we never see them do that."

I haven't really talked to this pair in some time, so now I'm curious whether they have a yard full of baby ducks.

Interestingly, I was telling a friend this story, and she told me that her mother didn't realise cats come in males and females. My friend, while still a child, had to explain to her mother that cats come in boy and girl versions.

Goodness.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

Remember, half of people have below average intelligence...still, the ignorance of some people astonishes me.

 

[Meerkat]

Remember, half of people have below average intelligence...still, the ignorance of some people astonishes me.

Those of you who have not seen the movie Idiocracy must see it to understand the magnitude of what we as a species face.

 

[Meerkat]

And . . . what kind of baseline are we talking about? What qualifies as average? I mean, I would think that this is just the sort of thing a sentient being would grasp without needing to have it explained to him or her. I mean . . . I mean . . . no one had to 'splain the birds and bees to my dog for her to figure it out how it works. And I mean . . . these people do have children.

Oh, wait. I see my problem here, as with aught else: I am attempting to fit logic to this. Square peg, round hole.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

It's just another level of the comment of a university educated colleague in his mid-20s who said, after getting his girlfriend pregnant, "I didn't know you could get a girl pregnant if you didn't want to." (This after his older brother had done exactly the same thing a few years before...) Um...what rock have you been hiding under? Actually, I know the answer to that--it was a religious rock they were under. Seems their church thought that if you deny sexuality exists, the normal laws of biology don't apply to you.

But, seriously, I can't think of an animal so publicly randy as ducks! How could you not see! They've even got a penis (unlike most birds, that are cloacal)!

My mother tells me, she saw it on the box, in Japan, men pay prostitutes to have sex drake and duck style. The man ducks the woman's head underwater, during...

 

[James Marinero]

They think that duck eggs are fertilised in a manner like fish eggs.

I explained that if you have a male duck and a female duck, and the duck lays an egg, then chances are good the egg is fertilised.

The lady member of this pair spake thusly: "Oh, no, we pick the eggs up right away -- they don't have time to be fertilised."

Oh to be a fly on their wall!

 

[Robinne Weiss]

My mother tells me, she saw it on the box, in Japan, men pay prostitutes to have sex drake and duck style. The man ducks the woman's head underwater, during...

That almost warrants a Derek!

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Well, yes, but who deserves the Derek....

 

[Robinne Weiss]

Well, of course, I'd never actually give you the Derek...

 

[Katie-Ellen]

All the parties involved get a Derek. The prostitute's client gets the first, for being violent and a perv, then she does, for permitting it, then my mother does for telling me about it, then I do for telling Litopia. But it just goes to show what common knowledge it is that ducks....you know, do Derek-y things. Especially the drakes.

 

[Meerkat]

What's . . . a Derek?

 

[Robinne Weiss]

Derek is the little flapping dragon you can rate a post with (the one all the way to the right, after the red 'groan'). It's the only one (I think) that gives a negative score to a post.

 

[KG Christopher]

So Derek is a dragon? @Robinne Weiss I thought it was a stalk.