You know you've arrrived at the Television Critics Association's summer meetings when you walk into a hotel ballroom just in time to hear a reporter ask if female ducks "climax."

No, we don't ask this of everyone.

Here, though, the panelists are representing PBS' "Nature," and specifically, a program titled, "What Females Want and Males Will Do," so ducks and how they do it is considered fair game, which is why it's only slightly startling that the very next question involves "duck rape."

So much attention, in fact, is showered on duck sex -- apparently Duck 189 even attempted carnal knowedge of some sort of robotic female -- that it's a full five minutes before I realize that actor F. Murray Abraham, who hosts the series, is also on the panel.

He gets to talk a bit about growing up listening to the radio, but is quickly upstaged by fellow panelist Patricia Brennan -- a "duck behavioral ecologist," according to our press kit -- who, in a rush of enthusiasm for her subject, demands (not of Abraham): "Where do you put 40 centimeters of phallus?"

I believe the question was rhetorical. At least I hope so.