In 2014 I taught a course on mathematical thinking at the Young India Fellowship in Delhi.
I used this book for parts of it: Discrete Mathematics with Ducks, by sarah-marie belcastro. A lot of her examples feature ducks.
On the last day of the course, my students brought in a cake, a Moebius strip sash, and a shoebox with a present . . .
The present was these ducklings.
They had names, and name tags. Propositional logic had been a recurring theme in the course. Their names were “If P” and “Then Q”:
I brought them home and set them up. The first set-up was a cat crate.
The second set-up was an old wading pool.
They pooped all the time.
The third set-up was in the garden, made of old screen doors.
They were protected from hawks and cats, but the garden also had mongooses. (I feel like that should be “mongeese,” but it isn’t.)
One day a mongoose burrowed into their enclosure and killed the ducks. It was probably trying to get at their food. It didn’t eat the ducklings. They were just lying there beheaded.
We buried them in a corner of the garden.
I had them for three weeks.
I learned a lot about ducks.