It may never fly again, but at least it’ll get to hang around a pond and swim around.
It all started this morning when I let the cats in that spent the night outside and the cats out that spent the night inside. Then reverse the process every five minutes for a half hour or so. When one cat hadn’t quite finished playing the back and forth game, I was getting ready to let her out when I looked across the yard and there sat a duck, a mallard.
I decided letting the cat out was probably a bad idea. You see I’m not really close to a body of water. There’s a pasture with a stock pond across the highway and the railroad tracks, but that’s almost a mile away. And the lake is 2 or 3 miles away, so it was curious why this duck showed up in my back yard. Several creatures show up like possums, rats, skunks, squirrels and even a hawk swooped in and landed once, but a duck?
I walked out toward it and as soon as I got real close, it started trying to move away and it was obvious the duck was hurt badly. I moved away so as not to disturb it too much and it turned where I could see blood on it’s left side.
I called animal control to see what to do, they said they’d be over in a couple of hours. When he showed up, we went to look at the duck which had gotten a little more life after resting. I asked him what they would do with it, he said if it was badly injured then they destroy it, the city didn’t have facilities to rehab it.
Whoa! says I. Isn’t there anybody that might take it? He said he had some numbers that I could call and went to his truck to check in to see what could be done. His boss said that he could take it to a vet that treats wild birds and the city would pay for it.
Ok, says I, let’s catch the duck. We did and the animal control guy put it in a cage and off it went to the vet. A while later I went out where the duck had been and found a piece of bone about 2 inches long. I thought the vet might need this to help fix it up.
I called the vet and they didn’t have the duck. No duck had showed up there. Where’s MY duck? Animal control says the duck’s at the vet’s.
I gave it a couple of hours and called back again. This time they had the duck and said the vet didn’t need the piece of wing bone. He had splinted the wing and thought it would heal ok, but it probably would never fly. He said if he wasn’t comfortable just releasing into a pond somewhere that he had a pond on his property to keep it.
So, MY duck is going to be OK due in no small part to the city animal control for picking up the tab for the vet and the vet for planning to take care of it after it heals.
I know it’s long, but just thought I would share it. I like when good things come out of bad situations. I don’t know how the duck’s wing got broken, possibly a kid with a pellet gun shot it or maybe a coyote almost caught it. It’s luck that it landed in my yard instead of the one next door where the 100 pound golden lab lives. The animal control guy cared enough that I didn’t want it killed to help find something to do with it. The vet that will put it on his own property if it can be released.
Thanks for your indulgence, carry on.
Jim