duck, duck, decapitation

I recently met the mother of a graduate student in the department. I got this e-mail later:

my mom liked meeting you... on the drive to texas, she kept saying morbid

things and then saying, "is that what i was supposed to tell jeremy?"  she

also told doug a creepy story about waiting for a lizard to dehydrate

behind our couch and then wished she had told you.  i like my mom.

This student did tell an anecdote about her mother while I was talking to her. It went something like this. The student came home one day to see her mother sitting at the table with a large metal tumbler. The mother was looking into the tumbler and giggling uncontrollably. She looked up, stared ahead for a moment, and then started giggling again and looking into the tumbler. She did this a couple more times. "What is it, Mom?" The mother giggled some more but then was able to suppress the glee long enough to exclaim "I love my duckhead!!!" Then the mother showed what was inside the tumbler. It was the severed head of a dead duck. True story, according to both mother and daughter. So I also like her mom, on the basis of this story alone.