Marty the duck’s student loan debacle
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Just when we think we’ve seen it all, our ducks surprise us… Somehow, a scammer got Susan’s (The Tyrant) email information and sent her an email addressed to our duck, Marty (formerly known as Mawy Gold – name change explained below). Evidently, unbeknownst to us, Marty incurred student debt and then became eligible for a time-sensitive loan forgiveness program.
We’ve included our email correspondence with the scammer below and will update this article as we learn more. Other than making you laugh, our hope is that this information will help other ducks avoid student debt.
Student Loan Department Outreach to Mawy Gold:
Mawy Gold, Hello this is Noah Santos on behalf of the Student-Loan Debt Department. We tried to contact you at your home and did not hear back. Your Student Loans have been marked as eligible for forgiveness under the new 2024 guidelines. Your case number is #97978, and your file will remain open in my system for only one more day. If you could please give your dedicated eligibility line a call at: (844-914-4937) Thank you so much and we hope to hear from you soon, Noah Santos
Our response to Student Loan Department:
Noah,
Thank you for bringing this urgent matter to our attention. Mawy Gold (Case #97978) is one of our beloved pet ducks. She never mentioned her plans for higher education to us, much less the fact that she took on student debt in pursuit of her ambitions. In hindsight, we should have done a better job of monitoring her online and offline activities. Obviously, that’s on us, not you, and we’ll definitely be limiting her screen time and access to the car from now on.
Also, we regret to inform you of a technical matter that may impede Mawy Gold’s ability to receive the student loan forgiveness you’ve so generously offered: Mawy is now Marty. It’s kind of complicated, so let me explain… Her original name was Marigold but we shortened it to Mary for brevity’s sake. Unfortunately, she has a slight speech impediment which made a hard “r” sound difficult for her to enunciate. Thus, after a discussion with the rest of the flock, we all agreed to change her name to Mawy so she could say her name.
Shortly thereafter, Mawy experienced ovarian damage due to over-production of eggs. As you no doubt know through your work in avian student loan forgiveness, the default sex in avian species (unlike mammals) is male, so once her ovaries shut down and stopped producing the hormones necessary to feminize her, she reverted to the avian default sex and now looks and acts like a male duck / drake. Yes, drake curl, green nuptial head plumage, and all!
After this transformation, another flock council meeting was called and—with Mawy’s prompting—we all concurred that her new name should be Marty. (Technically, there was one initial vote for the name “Marvin,” but that vote was withdrawn once frozen peas were offered.)
Noah, unlike you, I’m no expert on avian student loan forgiveness and I’m sure you have lots of other indebted ducks in your inbox to deal with. But on behalf of Marty, I’d really appreciate it if you could consult with your manager to see if your organization would still be willing to forgive her/his student loans despite three name changes and a sex change since she originally took on student loans? We wish Marty had applied for scholarships or asked us for help before burdening herself with debt, but here we are… You know how ducks are these days, am I right? 🙁
Again, thank you for your understanding and assistance. When drafting the next edition of our book The Impractical Guide to Keeping Pet and Backyard Ducks, we’ll include a new chapter guiding other duck keepers through the pitfalls of higher avian education and the intricacies of student loan forgiveness for their ducks.
Please reply to this email with your social security number and date of birth so we can move forward with the process of addressing Mawy Gold’s debt. Bonus: If you include your address, we’ll send you some eggs and a few of Marty’s recently molted flight feathers you can keep as a memento.
Yours in gratitude,
Aaron
Want to read more duck articles that will quack you up? Check out our fowl fiction series.
