A12

By FREDERIC FROMMER
The Associated Press

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WASHINGTON - It's clearly a case where the U.S. government failed to get all its ducks in a row.

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AP

SOMETHING TO QUACK ABOUT: This image provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows the front of a carrier card for duck stamps. People calling a federal phone number on the back of the card seeking information on how to order duck stamps are instead greeted by a phone-sex line due to a printing error.

Now callers are getting their feathers ruffled over a typographical mix-up in a phone number that tells hunters where to call to buy their duck stamps.

The duck stamps, which cost $15 a piece, are required to hunt migratory waterfowl in the United States.

The carrier card for the duck stamp transposes two numbers so, instead of listing 1-800-782-6724, it lists 1-800-872-6724.

The first number spells out 1-800-STAMP24, while the second number spells out 1-800-TRAMP24.

As a result, people calling a federal phone number to order duck stamps are greeted instead by a phone-sex line where they are enticed by a husky female voice to "talk only to the girls that turn you on," for $1.99 a minute.

The U.S. government uses nearly all the revenue from the stamps to purchase waterfowl habitat for the National Wildlife Refuge System. In 2006-2007, the latest figures available, duck stamp purchases brought in nearly $22 million.

This year's stamps, which feature a pair of northern pintail ducks, went on sale July 1 and are good through June 30. The error won't be corrected until next year's duck stamps.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the program, printed about 3.5 million duck stamps attached to cards with the wrong number. An agency spokeswoman, Rachel Levin, said it would cost $300,000 to reprint them.

"I don't know that it would be worth it to do a reprint," she said Thursday. "That's a lot of money we can be using for wildlife conservation. With all of the needs for conservation, it doesn't make sense to divert money away from an important cause."

For those people who like to dial by letter, the card does include the proper 1-800-STAMP24.

Ashton Potter Security Printers president and chief executive Barry Switzer said the company was provided with the wrong telephone number.

"We reproduced the wrong number correctly," he said.