Ducks are strange creatures. My grandmother owned one or a while, and it would always try to bite me, drive me into a corner, or suck out my soul with its demon eyes. But ducks are also alien life forms. They clearly don’t belong on this planet because they seem to have an extreme distrust of anything that isn’t a duck. Does that make ducks racist? I certainly think so. While you’re waiting in line to play some games at rAge expo Cape Town, or chilling at the DGL stand waiting for matches to start, I’d like to introduce you to ducks with six facts that you might already know.
But first a story!
The rubber ducks you see here were handed out to people attending the NAG LAN, and were included in a bag of goodies that also contains a sweet Assassin’s Creed Syndicate lanyard. The ducks were the idea of Lauren Das Neves, who told me that the ducks were included “just as a gag”, to add to the bizarre behaviour at the Jo’burg rAge expo where one person would start clapping, and then a mexican wave of clapping would spread like a virus throughout the LAN.
So it is with the ducks. If you’re able to go into the viewing area for the NAG LAN, you’ll often hear one little squeak turn into a thunderous noise of high-pitched joy. Yet another bizarre habit has popped up this weekend as well, with people in the LAN mimicking the scene in Finding Nemo where a bunch of seagulls are clamouring to eat a crab offered to them by Marlin. Shouts of “Mine!” are generally met with about twenty replies of “Mine!” within split seconds.
It’s really weird. And so too, as it happens, are these duck facts that you might already know.
Yes, I’m rather proud of my skills with Powerpoint, why do you ask?
Don’t ever try staring down a duck. You will lose… your eye.
How in the world does a duck become bored?!
In fact, the reproductive systems of a female duck have evolved so that male ducks can’t impregnant them by accident outside of breeding season.
And we’ll never know what those facts are.
Come join us at the rAge Cape Town expo!