Dive-bombed by a Duck

One of the very last things I would have expected during my visit to Borders (a 40%-off coupon cannot be allowed to go to waste!) was to be dive-bombed by a duck! Cody had just pulled the car into a parking spot, and we were chatting about the mundane world of our finances, when I looked up to see something my eyes couldn't put together, headed straight for the windshield.

A startled "whoa" got Cody's attention, and by that point, my mind had finally put together what I was seeing: the underside of a duck, wings fanned, feet first, coming in for landing. In the Borders parking lot. Nowhere near water.

Have you ever seen a duck from this angel? I hadn't. Ducks typically don't land five feet in front of me. In fact, I think it'd started its downward flight before we pulled into the spot, because it had to do a quick adjustment, and some part of it thwacked into the bumper after it was out of sight in front of us.

I leaned over to stare out my side window, amazed as I watched it waddle over the parking curb and into the shrubbery at the base of a tree in the parking space to my right.

We sat there a bit dazed for a few moments, then got out and carefully investigated the planter box, careful so that we hopefully didn't scare the duck or her possible chicks. She'd disappeared.

"Ninja duck," Cody whispered.

She was. We found her after we'd come back out (me with the latest paperback release of Jacqueline Carey's—and if you've been reading this blog for a while now, you know she's my favorite author, so I'm super excited). She (the duck, not Carey) was perfectly still in the middle of those bushes.

Now I'm concerned and unsure if there's something here I should do. She's decided to nest in the middle of a parking lot. Which means she's got a long trek to get her babies from that parking lot to the nearest water. I didn't see any babies at this time, though. Is there someone I should contact?