Not To Be Trusted With Knives

So Ducking Adorable

May 6, 2014 by Beth

So I was out for a run on the Quay after work today and as I was on my way home, as I walked up to Front Street, I saw what appeared to be a woman standing in the middle of traffic. As it turned out, however, she and another woman were in the process of catching some baby ducks that had wandered into the street (and all the drivers were stopped and some were trying to help them catch the ducks). For those who aren’t familiar with New Westminster, Front Street is a pretty busy street with lots of big trucks on it and it was really lucky that one of these people had spotted these little guys walking down the street before they got run over! One of the women who managed to catch two of the four ducks was so shaken up – she just kept saying “I’m shaking!”, so I took those two ducks from her. The other lady who had the two other ducks and I were then standing there thinking “What the heck do we do with these ducks??”, as there was no sign whatsoever of their mom. Someone else grabbed a paper bag from their car so that we could put them in that rather than trying to hold them and I decided to call the SPCA to ask what the heck we should do. The SPCA said that we could take them to the Wildlife Rescue Association in Burnaby, which fortunately is not too far from where we were. Since the other lady did not have a car, I decided to take them and so off I went with my bag of baby ducks:

I had to take them up to my apartment to get my car keys and their chirping briefly caught the attention of the kitties, but mostly the kitties just seemed affronted that I’d come home and didn’t feed them immediately.

The ducks did not seem overly happy about being in a car, as they chirped loudly every time I accelerated1 and one particularly brave one jumped out of the bag, which required me to pull over and catch him or her. I mean, I don’t think “duck running around in your car” is specifically described in the distracted driving legislation, but I can assure you, it should be.

When I got to the Wildlife Rescue, the volunteers there were very happy to have these rescued ducks brought in. I had to fill out some paperwork about where I found the ducks and such, and they told me that they would raise these little guys up to adulthood (which would take about 6 weeks) and then would release them back into the wild. They said that they figured these little guys were probably only about a day old and that often a duck has their nest away from the water and once the ducklings hatch, they mom walks the brood to the water, but often loses some along the way, because it’s hard to keep track of that many ducklings.

When I was telling my sister about my adventure tonight, I said, “I was channeling Dad!” because my Dad loved birds and was always rescuing them. But then she pointed out that if I were really channeling Dad, I’d have four ducklings swimming around in my bathtub right now, which is totally true.

I’m really glad that the Wildlife Rescue Association was there to help these little guys! Six weeks from now, I’ll be looking out for these guys while I’m out running at the Quay!

1. Smart cars are not know for their quiet engines. [↩]

Comments |3|

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.