Secret Service dispatched to guard ducks

[Terran1212]

WASHINGTON - The Secret Service, which has the job of guarding the president and other dignitaries, now has a new temporary duty — protecting a mother duck and her nine eggs.

The duck, a brown mallard with white markings, has had several names suggested by Treasury Department people, including "Quacks Reform," "T-Bill," and "Duck Cheney." It has built a nest in a mulch pile right at the main entrance to the Treasury Department on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Secret Service's uniformed division, which provides protection for the White House and Treasury building, has set up metal guard rails to protect the nest, which has attracted the notice of tourists on their way to see the White House.

The duck has been provided with a water bowl and seems oblivious to all the attention, sitting calmly on its nest on top of the mulch pile that surrounds one of the new trees planted along Pennsylvania Avenue as part of a renovation project.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=542&ncid=757&e=10&u=/ap/20050408/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/treasury_duck

[punpirate]

1. Snow has...

"been briefed on the duck...." ???

Who writes this shit?

[kliljedahl]

2. Don't let Cheney & Scalia near it

That's the kind they like, penned up & helpless.


http://www.kliljedahl.net

[Moderator]

3. Terran1212

Per DU copyright rules
please post only four
paragraphs from the
copyrighted news source.


Thank you.

DU Moderator

[Lisa]

4. is that duck a sign of impending doom for a cabinet appointee?

Colin Powell also had a duck nesting outside his office.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/whispers/archive/may2002.htm

"Bertha the Duck, Secretary of State Colin Powell's greeter, has flown the coop–with her eight little ones. Bertha is the mallard hen who laid her eggs in a cement planter used to keep likely car-bombers away from the department's diplomatic entrance. She was discovered two weeks ago by a bomb-sniffing dog who had its nose pecked when sniffing in the plants Bertha was using as camouflage. State officials had planned an elaborate ceremony for the time when Bertha's babies were born and pushed out of the nest to a nearby garden pool."

http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/2002/fyi/news/05/03/news.for.you/