The Thieving Duck
August 23rd, 2006 by Donncha
A duck robs a poor innocent woman as she’s distracted by the cute ducklings. Moments later they all rush off with their ill-gotten gains!
What you don’t see is the camera crew, make-up and lighting people and a small crowd watching from behind them. This was for some advert and of course the woman in question is a model.
I shot this on State Street, Chicago after stumbling upon the shoot by accident. They didn’t seem to mind, and I even got a dazzling smile from the model!
I like this: xtreme (login may be required)
2006-10-03 - Welcome visitors from snopes.com, thanks Kathy B for linking here, I appreciate it. Please feel free to leave a comment!
Snopes.com have now published this picture and the joke description on a separate page linking to this blog. Thank you!
2006-10-07 - John Marguess pointed me at Organized Crime which uses the same image in another joke email! Thanks John!
Here’s the text of the joke email (via snopes) for those of you who go searching for the origins of it. I’d love to know who concocted it in the first place!
Seems the Better Business Bureau got a complaint the other day about a scam in which AFLAC allegedly was taking advantage of women on the street and stealing their money.
Now we all at one time or another have thought that INSURANCE Companies have stolen from us; however, this scam is netting COLD HARD CASH from unsuspecting individuals.
The way it works is the thief uses children to distract the target. While admiring the cuteness of the kids the target is robbed of her cash and never knows what hit her.
I’m sending this out for all to be aware that this is happening and it’s right out on the streets in front of the general public.
A passer-by with a digital camera phone happened to capture the photo attached.
Review it carefully and use caution when distractions like this come along.
Good Luck, and don’t say you weren’t warned.
According to Snopes, it was an advert showing how safe Western Union money transfer system was. I really should have asked someone..
Tags: Advertising, aflac, aflac-duck, Birds, Chicago, Chicago Photos, Funny, in-photos, irishblogs, Nature, People, Photos, snopes, Street, theft, United States, Urban, Western-UnionFurther Reading:
66 Responses to “The Thieving Duck”
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August 23rd, 2006 at 1:33 am
This is hilarious! Nicely seen and captured.From 1-2-3
August 23rd, 2006 at 6:38 am
Funny :)3-2-1
August 23rd, 2006 at 7:45 am
haha… thats cool.if you hadn’t described the setting, i’d have thought this was real.321
August 23rd, 2006 at 8:23 am
LOL - the dangers of the modern city!"Look at me" (?)
August 23rd, 2006 at 10:15 am
Brilliant shot Donncha! Very Funny!You shouldn’t have mentioned the camera crew
August 23rd, 2006 at 10:38 am
A fine catch! You were certainly in the right place at the right time.
August 23rd, 2006 at 11:24 am
Another example of the superiority of ducks.
August 23rd, 2006 at 11:38 am
Haha - classic!(123)
August 23rd, 2006 at 11:41 am
fantastic shot and very funny too.1-2-3
August 23rd, 2006 at 11:45 am
Hilarious.First Thought
August 23rd, 2006 at 11:48 am
123what a smart duck!
August 23rd, 2006 at 11:53 am
Great shot. Think you showed me this one ages back. How you putting your Flickr comments here? I like the idea of removing the date in the post title, probably not possible on Wordpress for me. Plus, you have to be careful not have two identical titles.
August 23rd, 2006 at 11:58 am
Donal - I think I did show you it. It’s been sitting on my computer since last year, and I processed it last February!
The idea of merging Flickr comments into my blog came to me last night and I was up until all hours working on a plugin that grabs the “Latest Activity” rss feed from my Flickr stream and inserts them into my comments table. It works quite well, although it’ll have limited use because it’s so specialised. The image on Flickr has to have the same title as the post here, and it won’t update a comment if someone updates it on Flickr.
Expect a release in a few days time, but unfortunately not something we’ll put on wordpress.com!
August 23rd, 2006 at 12:09 pm
haha, very smart!1-2-3
August 23rd, 2006 at 12:16 pm
LolllBeautiful!!!(1-2-3)
August 23rd, 2006 at 8:47 pm
I love the photo. I trying to work out what the advert what was for. Some sort of Bird Flu awareness thing? “It won’t just cost your life. It’ll cost you cash!” Always a good way of scaring people.
August 23rd, 2006 at 8:49 pm
I’ll try again. I love the photo. I’m trying to work out what the advert was for……
August 24th, 2006 at 1:26 am
hahaha LOL! We can trust in ducks anymore..FT
August 24th, 2006 at 2:09 am
First ThoughtAFLAC!
August 24th, 2006 at 4:16 am
This is adorable! Love it…
August 24th, 2006 at 4:17 am
FTsweet
August 24th, 2006 at 9:22 am
First Thoughtwats in the bag
August 24th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
That’s too funny.
August 25th, 2006 at 6:08 am
Caught in the quack.. I mean act!!!
August 26th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
Love ther moment! Great!
October 4th, 2006 at 8:05 am
[...] Looks like I’ve made it. One of my photos was used on the snopes.com messageboard without linking back to me or crediting me. I shouldn’t be surprised I suppose, but I am a little angry at the original poster. Thankfully someone linked to it further down in the conversation. Thanks Kathy B. [...]
October 4th, 2006 at 2:08 pm
Looks like I’ve made it. One of my photos was used on the snopes.com messageboard without linking back to me or crediting me. I shouldn’t be surprised I suppose, but I am a little angry at the original poster. Thankfully someone linked to it further down in the conversation.
That would be because someone has scraped the photo out of your blog and has started sending it around the internet. Which would be why it appeared on snopes looking for verification. Congrats! You’re about to be an internet phenome. Your duckies are going to pop up for years.
October 4th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
Wow, so my photo is being sent about the place by email? Didn’t know that!
Four Kitties - I’m not mad at snopes specifically. I had never heard of snopes.com before this. I didn’t know that my photo was being used in an email. Makes me wish I had watermarked the image now.
October 4th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
Oh, and read my about page, I’m a guy
October 4th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
Don’t feel bad about not watermarking it. Thanks to Snopes, anyone who cares is going to know where it came from. That’s what led me here.
October 4th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Thanks for pointing that out Grey, I hadn’t thought of that! Thanks Snopes for publishing it, and thank you again Kathy B for linking here!
October 4th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
Love Snopes, I have it on my Google home page, and this story’s headline is up today. Love the picture!
October 6th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
Forwarded photo with snope description to my local email jokemaster - so now at least another hundred people will see it.
October 6th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
Great, great photo op. It’s amazing how people can fall for pranks like that. But ya know, why else do they put “Do not touch iron when hot!” warnings on things? Anyhoots, great pic.
October 13th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
Aww- Wanted it to be real. Great photo.
erutan
November 9th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
http://www.snopes.com/photos/advertisements/duckthief.asp
November 27th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
I havn’t seen this one circulating through my emails yet but I am sure I will lol
I found it searching through snopes looking for Nigerian scams using Western Union as a means to
obtain thier booty. Funny that this should turn out to be an ad for Wstern Union saying how secure they are.
I always do my homework when it comes to scams!
Anyone ever hear the addage: Did you ever try to milk a duck? hehehe
By the way Donncha, you are an excellant photographer!
December 20th, 2006 at 7:27 pm
this is hilarious and cute this is my new fav. website besides addicting games.com so thanx’s!
January 13th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
This photo is great! I didn’t expect a duck to be a thieving animal. A raccoon yes, duck no:) Must be a New York duck!
January 21st, 2007 at 1:20 pm
[...] to one of my posts so I checked my referrers and found that Dirty.ru and avalon5 had linked to my Thieving Duck sending a good number of [...]
February 3rd, 2007 at 3:10 pm
First thought was they trained it to do that, mind me that ducks can’t be trained. Unlike other pets who can re-act or respond to certain behavior.
February 5th, 2007 at 1:00 am
Used this on my blog, http://www.bobtheking.com
February 21st, 2007 at 7:52 pm
I found using wordpress to design my web sites a great time saver and with plugins for automatic sitemap generation and SEO optimisaion and easy changing of themes its such a web design time saver. If fact i just made a template from the theme im currently using and after veiwing the souce code i just saved as html and with a bit of copy and pasting moved all the content on my older html pages to the new template now my older pages all look the same as the blog template. On a new site this isnt a problem but this one has been around a while before i used wordpress. Still have a load of article pages to move over but i should be able to automate some of it with a few block text replacer programs i have. Hope to try out a flickr plugin soon to add some photoshop video tutorials.
March 6th, 2007 at 5:31 am
Hi, I’m an admin for a group called Consumerist.com, and we’d love to have your photo added to the group. Bear in mind that doing so releases the photo for use on Consumerist.com, read our About to learn more.
March 10th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Your picture is in this video too…
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/463213/oscar_prizes_of_2007_naazimca_video/
April 1st, 2007 at 4:52 am
Lucky stumble, fun photo. Anyone know what the commercial is?
April 1st, 2007 at 12:59 pm
This picture was featured on the Cute Overload web site. I found your page through a Google search that sent me to Snopes’ page.
http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/2007/03/most_sentaround.html
April 1st, 2007 at 2:28 pm
[...] would love to know who made an email attachment of my thieving duck and thank [...]
April 3rd, 2007 at 7:43 pm
This was too funny! Staged or not, it is hilarious. I mean, for this duck to be trained enough to do this act is unbelievable (that is, if ducks can be trained!)
April 11th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Darling picture. Too cute to be true, then I looked at the ducks feet. Aww, so that’s how they got the ducks to pose. They’re stuffed!
April 16th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Hi - I posted this at zefrank.org due to his affinity for ducks and their antics. Someone credited you as I didn’t know the author of the photo. Please let me know if you would like me to take it down.
April 26th, 2007 at 2:33 am
Funny, but the babies look like gosslings
April 30th, 2007 at 7:01 am
Hi, I’m an admin for a group called Chicago animals that are native to chicago, and we’d love to have your photo added to the group.
May 31st, 2007 at 5:18 am
oh this is great! Saw it on the Consumerist this morning.
May 31st, 2007 at 5:18 am
oh this is great! Saw it on the Consumerist this morning.
June 1st, 2007 at 1:40 am
DjMagra - yeah, they asked. See the comment from them a few comments above? There was an uproar about them using images with crediting photographers but they got such a response they did the right thing and provided credit!
Besides, I can’t sell the image. That model didn’t sign a model release form..
June 1st, 2007 at 11:07 am
[...] My Thieving Duck has been used on the Consumerist website! That photo seems to be rather well known! [...]
June 1st, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Did Consumerist ask / pay for this?
June 11th, 2007 at 10:26 am
[...] Your Photos: How to Defend Your Copyright - I have a keen interest in this after my Thieving Duck became a joke email [...]
June 14th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
It was in the News of the World supplement last Sunday.
June 14th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
[...] found out that my Thieving Duck was used by the News of the World last Sunday without permission. Thanks [...]
June 15th, 2007 at 4:27 am
wow*
nice steal*
–
Seen on inphotos.org (?)
June 15th, 2007 at 11:03 am
[...] you read the UK Sunday newspaper, The News Of The World? A comment was left on my photoblog yesterday saying that newspaper used my Thieving Duck image in their [...]
July 2nd, 2007 at 10:36 am
[...] it’s simple to steal photos these days, and I spotted my Thieving Duck on yet another joke site. Most recently, the News of the World used it, this time it’s on [...]
January 8th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
[...] by the cute ducklings. Moments later they all rush off with their i1l-gotten gains!Later the true story behind the image was known: ‘What you don’t see is the camera crew, make-up and [...]
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:55 am
[...] anyone want to claim credit for the others? Unfortunately email forwarders don’t usually give credit [...]