“Grieving Momma-Duck Paralyzes Traffic on the A3 Autobahn” – it’s quite a story, a tragedy, really, reported by the Rheinische Post from news-agency dispatches.

As we humans know, you actually never try to walk across the Autobahn in Germany, not unless we’re talking about a pedestrian overpass. But this momma-duck didn’t know anything about that, and apparently led her brand-new brood of ducklings onto Autobahn 3, at the spot just to the west of Cologne where it crosses Autobahn 4 coming from the west.

That brood numbered a bit more than five ducklings. We know at least “five” because, unfortunately, that was how many smashed duckling bodies were left there on the pavement, before the momma-duck and the rest of the ducklings managed to get off the highway quick and into the surrounding foliage.

The problem was that the momma-duck then reappeared at the same spot around three hours later, presumably trying to find out what had happened to her missing progeny. She was harder to drive away this time; for whatever reason, there were firefighters on the scene, but she wouldn’t let herself be caught nor be shooed away from the Autobahn – where, we can assume, the on-coming high-speed traffic was staring to make things dangerous.

So the police shut the Autobahn down! For the duck! As they tried to chase her away, which is where she went after about half an hour. (I would have loved to hear the report on the traffic bulletin broadcast by both national and the local radio stations!)

Now, this happened during the day last Wednesday, so a business day but with perhaps traffic a little less thick than usual because for many it was the tail-end of summer vacation. But the traffic was undoubtedly still substantial – this is Autobahn 3, people, the Autobahn coming out of Cologne and paralleling the Rhine southward for a while before heading eastwards to Frankfurt am Main, and beyond.

I have never heard of the Dutch authorities ever shutting down a highway due to any bird. Then again, in a couple of places there highways do have “animal” overpasses, that is, bridges built over the highway from the woods on one side to the woods on the other, for wildlife to use. These are expensive, of course, and perhaps one could argue about their actual benefits to the public versus their costs; but then again, perhaps Germany could take up this idea and add a couple of these to its infrastructure budget nonetheless. Sorry, no sort of “public service announcements” are going to be able to educate the ducks!

Are you constantly on the look-out for the offbeat, even bizarre European event/festival/occasion to attend, both for the sake of the experience itself and for wowing your friends when you tell them about it later? Then consider the annual Luxembourg duckrace (website in French):

(Don’t worry, this YouTube video soon straightens itself out by turning 90° to the proper orientation. Also, just dig the announcer speaking in Luxembourgish!)

As you see, a more-accurate name for this would be The Rubber Duck Race: a load (~10,000) of classic yellow* rubber ducks (each with a number affixed at its bottom) is dumped with great ceremony upstream into the brook called the Pétrusse. This was once the mighty river that through the eons carved out the tremendous and picturesque canyon that gives Luxembourg a topography like no other city, but which in modern times has been tamed to flow meekly over a concrete riverbed down at the bottom of the gorge, a shadow of its former self and thereby a prominent instance of Man triumphing over Nature.

Nonetheless, it still has enough water flowing to function, in effect, as an idiosyncratic once-per-year lottery. For people pay €5 for each duck they wish to “sponsor” (“You will have up to 30 minutes before departure of the first wave to register, train and coach your champion,” the website declares), and those that emerge first downstreat at the finish line win prizes. This year’s run happened just yesterday, and the results indicate that a Renault Twingo automobile was the prize for first place, an electric bike for second, and so on down the line for the first 30 finishers.

Naturally, this is all done for charity. This year a pair of institutions for abused children and for children with cancer were the beneficiaries of the funds raised.

* Most are indeed yellow, although it’s clear from the video that the organizers are willing to make some gestures towards duckie diversity and multi-culturalism.