Why did the duck cross the road?

MAD MALLARD mums frequently make the news. Ducks and their young turn up in the most unlikely places, causing all manner of mayhem, including traffic chaos.

A duck with delusions of grandeur nested for several years in the grounds of Leinster House; photos of gardaí holding up the traffic as the proud mother led her brood to the pond in St Stephen’s Green appeared in newspapers. Another duck laid her eggs in a window box on the first floor of an elegant Georgian house in Ballsbridge. The mother then persuaded the hatched little balls of fluff to leap from the ledge to the pavement below, from which she led them to the River Dodder, in the traffic-free quiet of the early morning.

This year, a duck nesting on the sill of a three-storey window of an office block in Dublin was not so lucky. Once her brood made it to the street below, they did not get far before disaster struck; the mother was run over by a car. RTÉ’s Mooney show tried to find out what became of the babies. It seems they were taken away by a woman who can’t be traced.