To heck with the dogs, beware the ducks!

No <bleep>, there I was thought I was gonna die... (all good skydiver stories start with that phrase so I had to throw it in)

Microsoft is designed with a campus style architecture, lot's of individual buildings with open areas and well maintained landscaping in between to encourage creative thought. Surrounding most of campus are some walking/running trails, some wooded areas and, on the East side, a couple of small ponds can be found along the edge of the trails. You can often find parents with small children feeding bread to the ducks at the ponds. Since I live nearby I use the trails to walk a portion of the way to my office each morning. This morning things turned strange. After several weeks of not seeing any of the usual ducks around the pond I turned the corner to see there were quite a few of them and they were all rapidly heading out of the water and starting to run up the trail towards me. That's only a bit unusual as they've figured out people often have food so they come right up and wait for it sometimes. (Much like dogs do. Cat's on the other hand don't bother, they just take what they want and let you know you should be grateful they chose you to take it from) However, what I didn't expect was their continued acceleration and wing extensions to take off. The challenge and wakeup for the morning was due to the simple fact that ducks don't exactly "go vertical" like an F15. They are more like an old 1950's crop duster that's never flown higher than 500' off the ground. So while they move pretty fast forward they don't go up very fast. (and they were still headed directly to wards me). New Discovery Channel moment for me: ducks are either blind or can't steer very well when they are taking off! I had to do an interesting bob and weave dance to keep from getting smacked in the face with a flying duck. Now, I've always been fond of Peking duck, and of course those silly little fortune cookies that go with it, but colliding with one at top speed didn't seem like a good idea. Then of course there was the not so irrational fear of... how shall I say... "droppings" as they flew over.