From the land of 10,000 lakes...

"As stupid as it sounds, maybe if more people had a duck in their life, maybe we wouldn't be all so mad at each other." -- Joe Mansheim

Video, as picked up by NBC in Los Angeles.

Original Kare 11 video, with anchor commentary before and after. (Smaller frame size. This "Land of 10,000 Stories" feature aired in November 2008.)

Written version of the story.

With thanks and a tip o'the L.A. link hat to enegim!

More Duck News

The duck in a truck story has drawn over 500 comments on the website of the LA NBC station that ran it in late January. And it's currently the lead post in the Improbable Research blog, thanks to Kees Moeliker, the original Duck Guy. Kees won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2003 for documenting the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck. But we won't tell Joe Mansheim that part of the story. Unless he goes ego-scanning via Google and stumbles across it here or there, that is.

Kees even has a book, The Duck Guy, coming out later this month. I'd have to read Dutch to fully enjoy it, but I'm not going to let my limited language skills stop me. It doesn't look like the book will be out in time for me to ask Vince to pick up a copy to bring to Boskone next week, but I'm going to take along some of my foreign currency in the hope that he'll be able to find a copy later and bring it over on a future trip.

(Speaking of Duck Guys, I have no idea what Minneapolis fan Mike Wood might have thought of Kees' research. He would have totally grokked the Joe & Frank story, though. I'm pleasantly surprised to realize I can clearly imagine seeing and hearing his reaction to it, even though it's 25+ years since Mike died and I never knew him all that well in the first place. Interesting.)

Update: Oops. Improbable link now fixed. In the nature of blogs, there's now a new post on top. You can go straight to the duck, or have fun scrolling through everything. Be sure to catch the Improbable TV episode about the Toe-tapping Cane Toads.