| Thursday, May 6, 2004 |
13:15 - You ducks are really trying my patience!
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How's this for something I didn't think actually happened in real life?
I was on my way back from picking up a burrito at Chipotle (and getting some twenties at the local Wells Fargo, where I noted with some interest two twentysomething guys at the ATM next to me, poking at the keypad and talking animatedly to each other in a language I couldn't identify. They looked European and touristy, but I couldn't figure out of what variety). I'd just come through the intersection of De Anza and Stevens Creek, the largest crossroads in Cupertino, with four lanes in each direction and several turn lanes to boot, and lunch-hour traffic pouring through.
I was the second car through after the light changed, in the leftmost lane. Suddenly, just after we left the intersection, the car in front of me screeched to a halt. There were two guys standing in the raised and landscaped median and moving into my lane and the next, raising their arms to the oncoming traffic in the international signal for "Either I'm very inebriated, or there's a dead body in the road." My lane, and then the lane next to me, stopped and strained to see what was going on.
It was a mother duck, with four ducklings in tow, hurrying across eight lanes of midday traffic. Where did they come from? Where were they going? There wasn't a river, significant corporate landscaping, or any major water features anywhere nearby. But there they went, waddling across the asphalt, being shielded by these two motorists who had pulled to the side of the road to herd them across and fend off the cars.
I put on my hazard blinkers and sidled past as the ducks purposefully left my lane. By the time I'd reached the end of the block, they were all the way across.
Boy, do I wish those guys from the ATM had been there in traffic next to me. If nothing else, it might have provided them a little Stateside experience to take back home that didn't involve McDonald's, Wal-Mart, gun-toting rednecks, or pyramids of naked Iraqi prisoners.
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Brian Tiemann
