The following is the third in a series of columns chronicling my summer gallivanting around Europe.

The River Cam runs through The Backs of several residential colleges in Cambridge. Always a sucker for sly utilitarian names, I admire the blunt simplicity in naming a 799-year-old university after a small river and the bridges that run up and down its length. Compound words have never made a more boring combination of words sound so prestigious or pretentious.

The Backs, likewise, is just Cambridge-lingo for the backside of a cluster of colleges where the River Cam runs gently beside the impeccably maintained lawns. It’s here on the back lawn of King’s College that I ritualistically sat on the riverfront in the mornings to practice the art of impressing tourists.

They float by in punts, long gondola-like boats propelled by wooden poles pushing against the shallow bottom of the river. And feeling like it was my duty to play the part of the archetypal Cambridge student studying by the Cam, I would pretend to thumb through lecture notes riverside.

Tourists punting by King’s snapped photos of the gothic architecture and invariably had me in their pictures, a faux-Kingsman sitting on a bench and pretending to be engrossed in my reading.

It was during one of these mornings when I was reading Salman Rushdie/posing as a scholar for the punters that a giant mallard waddled up from behind my bench. I didn’t notice it at first until it quacked and with clumsy pomposity marched in my direction.

I have a theory that every university has a bit of an animal control problem. On campus in Champaign-Urbana, our resident pest is the limber squirrel who darts around trees causing general mayhem. Across the Atlantic in Cambridge, however, ducks reign supreme along The Backs of the River Cam.

This particular duck waddled up behind the bench I was sitting on. And it just stood there. Staring. I put down my book and stared back, quietly snapping photos of it as its green and blue head spun right and left investigating my shuttering gadgetry. Eventually, it walked right passed the bench, flaunting its brilliantly purple flank. Still watching me with intense curiosity, the mallard didn’t notice the passing punters now taking photos of it locked in a mortal-combat staring contest with a boy.

I know that this was a special duck. Moments later, when my phone started to ring, it reared its head and waddled about my bench in search of the source of the sound. It listened to my entire conversation as I chattered away on the phone, and then sauntered around to the ledge of the river. Just as a small fleet of punts gathered to watch the spectacle between the duck and me, it hopped off the ledge and paddled down the river.

I want a pet mallard.

A few evenings later, some friends and I conceived the idea of an illicit midnight punting expedition down the River Cam. Not fans of punting in a heavily congested river with other boaters, we opted not to punt until the opportune moment. We wanted to see Cambridge by water by night. After drawing up crude plans, we waited until the sun set, and then like ghosts flying across the footpaths on King’s back lawn, borrowed one of the college’s unlocked punting poles and commandeered an unmoored punt.

The scene of our witless group of Americans punting at snail pace down the river is one I’m glad nobody noticed that evening. None of us having punted before, I realized why so many of the daytime tourists opted to hire professionals to do it for them.

Our punt careened from right to left bank of the river as we took turns trying to steady the boat. After a half-hour of fruitless repositioning in the river, we gave up and clumsily turned the boat back around.

Our masterminded midnight punting adventure ended as a rather large disappointment. And just as we brought the boat back dutifully, a single shout in the distance caused us all to scatter in fear of getting caught. We put the punting pole back and promised to ourselves like guilt-ridden children never to steal a punt again.

I woke the next morning and went about my reading routine in front of the river. And I swear the ducks in the river swam by my spot, watching me knowingly with their accusing eyes.

Maybe I don’t want a mallard after all.