There’s No Ducking the Freeway Fallout of Hatching Season for Mallards

Is there a conspiracy by ducks to disrupt the freeway system? That’s what Ron Widman of Redlands asked after reading about a mother and her offspring waddling onto the San Bernardino Freeway. He was aware of recent incidents in which families of waddlers also disrupted commuters on the San Diego Freeway and on Pacific Coast Highway, not to mention Lincoln Avenue in Cypress (see accompanying).

What it is, said Kimball Garrett of the L.A. County Natural History Museum, “is duck hatching season. They’re mallards, one of the few waterfowl species that have adapted to urbanized areas.” And he explained why the m.o. always seems the same: one mom and the kids out for a stroll.

“The fathers don’t have much direct involvement in the care of the young,” said Garrett, the ornithology collections manager. “It’ll be several weeks before the babies learn to fly and, before then, they walk around and follow mommy. She has to find a good feeding area for the young. If she walks across a freeway to get to one ... well, they’re very good at following mother.”

Perhaps it’s time to build duck-pool lanes.

Surfing back in time: In Tuesday’s column, I wrote about the prankster who altered a crossing sign in Pasadena so that it appeared to show a pedestrian carrying a surfboard.

That reminded entomologist Rick Vetter about a project he was involved in years ago at UC Riverside in which several such signs were embellished “as performance art or guerrilla graffiti or whatever.” Most are preserved only in photos now. One showed a pedestrian wearing a mortarboard and holding a diploma. Another, near the Neurobiology Department, depicted a figure holding a magnifying glass near a floating brain. And, near the Entomology Building, a figure was shown wielding a net (see photo). And, no, the latter wasn’t chasing ducks.

Hollywood uses stand-ins all the time: I hope you readers out there are working as hard as I am at finding a solution to the Hollywood sign controversy. The Hollywood secessionists want the landmark, you’ll recall, but Angelenos have said no, pointing out it’s in Griffith Park.

No one seems to have embraced my idea of leaving it in place and merely inserting an arrow pointing to Hollywood.

So here’s my next proposal: The secessionists should obtain the Hollywood sign that stood inside Legoland when the amusement park in Carlsbad opened. It’s available because Legoland was forced to take it down a few months later after the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce threatened to sue.

Perhaps it was just an unusual homework assignment: The police log of the Saddleback Valley News reported that some juveniles in Laguna Hills were observed “using toilet paper to spell out words on the hillside behind Ralphs.”

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miscelLAny: Owen Simon noticed that a shelf at a Sherman Oaks library held the autobiography of National Rifle Assn. President Charlton Heston next to a book titled “Don’t Shoot It’s Only Me,” by Bob Hope.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012 and by e-mail at steve. [email protected].