"C" is for Crazy

Last year I was walking Tully and Zach at the park, and a lady from our neighborhood stopped in the middle of the street while driving by.  She rolled her window down, screamed that something was killing the ducks, and said my dog was responsible.  What?!  Because he's off leash, Zach is a duck killer?   I kindly informed her that the park rules allow for dogs to be off-leash as long as they are under the owner's control on a heel.  Zach regularly walks with us without a leash, and we laugh at our neighbors who have a death grips on their leashes while they walk the path.  The other dogs regularly pull, lunge, and bark when we pass, and Zach ignores them completely.  He really is a good boy on our walks.

So anyway, enough about my model dog.  When the lady yelled at me last year, I made a mental note that she drove a black Lexus.  Our neighborhood is fairly small, so we see some of the same cars over and over.  Earlier this year I saw her pull into a driveway adjacent to the park.  The childish side of me immediately had visions that involved eggs, toilet paper, and shoe polish, but we're all adults here, right?  Just because she screams at young moms with babies in strollers out walking dogs doesn't mean I have to stoop to her level.

A few weeks later I saw her come out of her house and cross the street with a bucket.  Next thing I know she's calling the ducks over by name to feed them.  The park rules CLEARLY state that feeding the ducks is not allowed.  Feeding them actually disrupts their ecosystem or something.  Talk about breaking the park rules, lady.   I told John about it that evening, and, of course, he only wanted to know what the ducks names were.  Typical.

So this past weekend we were out enjoying a family stroll in the nice weather.  We see the duck lady walk out and start calling for "Whitey" and Bridget" to come get dinner.  As we made the loop towards her, John said if she was still out there when we got to that area he was going to ask her what their names were.  I was mortified of the thought of stopping to talk to her.  Luckily, she had gone back home before we got there, so disaster was avoided.

We had a good laugh about her naming the ducks and thought up all sorts of devious plots during the rest of our walk.  Our ideas involved standing on the other side of the pond and feeding the ducks at the same time or even setting up a table with a sign that says we're offering organic, whole-grain, sulfate-free duck food with no preservatives.  We also discussed building a duck blind at the park and hiding in it.  Our best idea though was to say that we've been seeing dead ducks around and accuse her of poisoning them.  I'm sure she'd totally flip out on us.  She IS one crazy, duck lady.

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