Hank Turns His Duck-Killing Budget Threat into a Writing Prompt

Hank Devereaux transforms a student’s blunt question about his threat to kill a duck into an assignment on persuasion. The move gives his students a concrete argument to develop while keeping the threatened act unresolved; days later, a campus demonstration and a televised report bring the threat back into public view, without establishing who was responsible for the bird found hanging from a tree.

From Threat to Assignment

With ten minutes left in a class that had started fifteen minutes late, a student Hank calls Bobo asks whether he is actually going to kill a duck. Bobo is Hank’s nickname for him, not his real name. The student is present because Hank had threatened to fail him for the term if he missed another class, and Hank describes him as his worst student.

Rather than answer the question as a simple yes or no, Hank makes it the subject of a persuasive essay. Each student must argue either that he should kill a duck or that he should not; maiming or plucking a duck is explicitly ruled out as a way of avoiding the choice. The assignment is due Monday, the same deadline Hank has given for the threat.

The Class Responds

The students groan when Hank explains the task, but he notices that they direct more hostile looks at Bobo than at him. Bobo adopts the air of someone who knew better and nevertheless caused trouble in a momentary lapse. The class, Hank observes, seems to recognize that Bobo’s question has cost them a weekend without a writing assignment.

Bobo’s incredulity about the Monday deadline prompts Hank to point out that he has threatened to kill a duck by Monday, so by Tuesday he will no longer need the students’ advice. When another student asks whether the essays must be typed, the exchange keeps the threat at once a real deadline and a classroom premise for argument. The assignment does not report that Hank carries it out; it asks the students to reason about whether he should.

The Threat Returns to Public View

Later, Hank emerges from his office into a crowded hallway as Missy Blaylock draws him toward a television camera. Protesters have raised the previous Friday’s chant, and colleagues who are not teaching have come out to watch. The reporter introduces him as the English department chair and recalls his threat to kill a duck each day unless he receives a budget. She then asks about a duck reportedly found hanging from a campus tree limb early that morning; someone in the crowd corrects her that it was a goose.

Hank answers, "No comment," drawing a groan from the onlookers. The televised encounter shows how the classroom prompt sits within a wider campus controversy: the threat has become a public spectacle, while the identity of whoever hung the bird is not established in this scene.