A viral video out of Lake Arrowhead, California, has left social media in disbelief after a woman, whom we’ll dub “Karen,” waded into a lake to intervene in what she believed was a duck attack.
The footage, which first surfaced on Instagram before spreading to Reddit, shows the woman repeatedly shouting “Hey!” at a male duck as it mounted a female. To her, it looked like aggression. To everyone else, it was simply mating.
As the ducks splashed in the shallows, the woman grew more frantic, berating onlookers for “just standing around” and demanding someone hand her a net. Incredibly, a passerby actually obliged before the clip cut off. Around the person filming, bewildered voices can be heard wondering aloud whether she understood how ducks reproduce. One man mutters, “How do you think more ducks get made?” while another questions the wisdom of stressing the animals further.
Online, the reaction was swift and merciless. Instagram commenters called it “next level crazy” to “cock block a duck,” while another deadpanned, “Who in their right mind gave this woman a net?” Over on Reddit, the sarcasm came sharper still. One user imagined the duck’s perspective: “I love how she yells ‘Get away from her!!’ as if the drake would back off like, ‘oh, so sorry ma’am.’” Others couldn’t help but sympathize with her husband, predicting he’d be treated to a dramatic retelling at home about how she “saved the day.” One joked that “This lady is a real quack.” Good one!
Some commenters did point out that duck mating can look brutal, as males often pin females underwater, and fights sometimes end fatally. But even those users stopped short of defending the intrusion, with one summing it up bluntly: “She’s doing more harm than good.”
For most, the absurdity of the scene overshadowed everything else. As one viral comment put it, “Tell me you’re from California without telling me you’re from California.”
