Duck soup

My brother George called today from vacation. They are headed home momentarily and he wanted to know how are things in Buffalo.

"I heard there was this rubber duck," he said.

In San Francisco! He heard about our rubber duck in San Francisco!

It is true, of course. There is this big traveling rubber duck and it was bobbing around for a while in our waters. And every single person in the greater Buffalo area turned out to see it. Everyone!

I took the picture up above and it was not easy. The people were five deep by the railings. And that was on Friday! Here is something that happened. There was this woman grousing to her husband that her phone was dead.

"I come all the way here and find that my camera doesn't work," she kvetched.

I said sympathetically, "Oh, I've had that experience."

And she turned to me and said mockingly: "Oh, you've had that experience."

What a meanie! Don't you hate when that happens? She must have been from out of town. Buffalonians do not act like that. Here I was going to offer to take her picture and email it to her or something. Forget that!

Over the weekend the duck drew even bigger crowds. There were traffic tie-ups. People got angry. It was the biggest event at Canalside, I heard, counting anything. Everyone in the city came to see this duck. There was nobody who did not.

You would think Leonard Pennario were playing! Excuse me, I have Pennario on the brain, I have been working very hard.

It was not easy to take an impressive picture of the duck from your phone because it was rather far away. Here is another attempt I made.

We had a video at The Buffalo News where you can watch it inflate. 

There is another video where you can watch it deflate but I found that upsetting. It was as if the duck was having some kind of seizure.

Well, it was fun while it lasted, that was for sure. And the joke was on my brother George. You cannot leave this town for a second.

If you do, you miss everything!