I know opinion on beards varies widely, but I’m usually in the “what good is it?” camp. I mean, I guess beards are good if you want to mark yourself out as being Brooklyn-hip, but otherwise they seem to just hang around under your chin picking up food particles. Well, Reddit user Spongi has shown me the light: The purpose of a beard is to provide a comforting snuggle spot for lonely ducks.
Spongi tried to incubate some chicken eggs, but unexpectedly ended up with no chicks and one duckling; he writes, “it turns out one of the eggs in there was a duck egg and apparently duck eggs are more hardy or tolerant of shitty incubation techniques.” But baby ducks get lonely without constant company, so Spongi had to let his beard sub in for a mama duck’s wing.
(The towel is for poop problems. Apparently ducks cause a lot of these.)
The duck, named Peeps, has gotten used to sitting on Spongi’s shoulder and still hangs out there even though she(?) is too big to sleep under his beard.
You can see more pictures here, and read about Spongi’s plan to hatch Peeps some brothers and sisters. It’s a heartwarming story, with only a minimal amount of poop and face-biting!
