By Mark Graven
Staff Reporter
Turtles are hard to impress 
Paddling fun 
Ducks in a row
On a brilliant sunny afternoon of September 15th, at the UNM Duck Pond, the duck population is growing, and calling itself to order.
In midsummer, the duck population had fallen below 20 ducks. Now ducks are returning from their summer vacations in northern latitudes, and beginning to settle in for fall and winter.
Today there are more than forty ducks, paddling about, or watching from the pond’s edge, where they naturally line up in rows to observe the turtles, sunning on pond rocks, and humans who recline in the shade of trees, or sit on benches surrounding the water.
It’s a far cry from the hundreds of ducks the pond regularly hosts in the winter, and certainly not enough to impress the turtles, who are rock-solid residents of the pond year around. Yes, indeed, the turtles are hard to impress.
