Image: Duck of Vaucanson, Wiki Commons, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Duck_of_Vaucanson.jpg

Today is Pynchon in Public Day, or at least has been declared to be so by the internet. It is the reclusive author's birthday (and we note there is another novel due out this year). In honour of this event, it looks like the lovelorn Mechanical Duck, inspired by de Vaucanson's Digesting Duck, has chased off the pigeons that sometimes like to hover around the @_Americas twitter account, and has somehow taken the reins. The creature is now working his way through our collections.

That Duck! Normal service, we hope, will be restored at some point.[M.S.]