Our neighbors across the street (the Loud Family, as we’ve been calling them since ’99), recently completed a home improvement project: they dug a big-ass hole in their front yard (with much of the work completed at 11 pm, thankyewverymuch). After the hole had ripened for a few months they proceeded to pile broken concrete blocks around it, set up a ring of Malibu lights around it (with spacing of about 18″ between each of them), and filled it with water. After the water had fermented long enough to contribute to the local mosquito population they went ahead and added a pump to it and jury-rigged a waterfall/pond setup out of the whole contraption. It’s quite nice. And the white temporary tied-down awning they’ve erected over it is the crowning touch. It’s fabulous.

But all that is just stage dressing. The point of this entry is The Duck. I mentioned The Duck a few entries ago, when I talked about the freak who was stalking our cats. The Duck was an interesting part of the story, but I really only mentioned it for the ambience of the story. Tonight, he gets his own entry.

After building their fabulous property-value-destroying front yard pond and waterfall, the neighbors realized that they had not yet achieved perfection. To do that, the pond needed livestock. Ducks. Because no neighborhood is complete without the soothing tones of Quack-Quack-Quack! echoing across manicured lawns.

So, yeah, they’ve got ducks. And okay, fine, ducks are fine, I grew up on farms and in small towns and so I’m not unfamiliar with barnyard animals in a residential setting. I’ve got nothing against the ducks, even though they’re right outside my bedroom window. I actually think it’s nice, in a really weird way, to wake up on the weekends to hear them clucking at each other. It takes you out of LA for a minute, hearing ducks quacking and clucking at odd moments.

So all that is all good. Ducks are just ducky. But one of these ducks has cabin fever, he can’t stand being shut up in the pond. This duck has to take a walkabout every night, and he usually takes a position right in the middle of the intersection in the street out front. That’s where he was in the freaky cat-stealing-guy entry.

Well, tonight I was reading Zoe her bedtime story, and we were having a good laugh at the fact that while reading this story that was about snow ducks, we could hear real ducks quacking in the street outside. It was funny. And then the dogs started going bananas because someone was knocking on our front door.

It seems an elderly woman was driving by and had to stop for the duck. It was sitting right in the middle of the street, bold as brass, and was completely unafraid of cars speeding toward it. So she stopped for the duck, and it then sauntered into our driveway. She figured it was our duck and was kind enough to try to let us know that our duck was on the loose.

See, that’s funny right there. Suburban Los Angeles, a quiet middle-class residential neighborhood, and people are knocking on doors to let you know that your duck is stopping traffic. That’s some wacky shit there.

I went outside and shooed the duck off. I herded him down the street toward his palatial pond and he took off and flew away into the night. I helped the old lady back to her car (it was getting dark and she was a little shaky on her feet), and as she drove off that stupid duck came gliding down out of the sky and landed right in the middle of the street where he’d been in the first place. I shooed him away again, and again he just made a big circle and landed right back in his favorite spot in the middle of the street.

At this point you’re probably wondering when the duck’s owners get involved. They don’t. They only come out at night to do front yard construction and play basketball in the street and blast their car stereos on weeknights. I’ve never seen them in even the general vicinity of their duck. Theirs is a latchkey duck, apparently.

Anyway. I’ve shooed the duck off twice and it persists in perching in the street. What else can you do but break out the camera and take pictures?

First, here’s the duck just hanging out. This is from a few days ago. That’s our driveway in the foreground and, obviously, a duck in the street.

People like to walk their dogs in our neighborhood, and having a rambling duck in the area leads to pictures you don’t get a chance to take every day. Here’s a dachsund going after a duck. Only in LA…

These next two pictures are from tonight. In the first one, we see yet another car that has stopped for the duck. These folks drove by a few minutes after the duck returned for the second time. They, like many others, were concerned for the duck and stopped to see if they could help. They soon learned that this is a duck that does not want their help.

In this last one, the helpful people learn that this is apparently an attack trained duck. He’s going after the girl in the skirt, and he literally chased her around the car, quacking, while she screamed like, well, a girl.

They gave up and left after that. You would, too, if you’d been attacked a duck. The poor girl was traumatized. And the duck? He took off after awhile too.

But he’ll be back. It’s what he does. He’s a mallard on a mission.