Lucky Duck
Anyone who has adopted pets from animal shelters is probably familiar with the slogan “Who Rescued Who?” Today I was rescued by a ring-necked duck.
The morning began like most others during the pandemic. I woke up, read the news, wished I hadn’t, took a quick glance at email—and that’s when I saw the message on Nextdoor Bainbridge:
Help! Wild animal rescue needed.
My mind flashed to the baby seal I’d encountered on the beach two years ago. She was a lanugo—premature, but remarkably agile. When I first saw the little furball, she was hidden next to a rock. The rock started barking as I approached, and then sprouted two black coffee eyes that implored me to be her mother.
Oh, how I yearned to be her mother!
The pup followed me in the sand until I urged her to stop, rest, wait for her real mother to return. After monitoring her for several days and making numerous phone calls to marine mammal experts, I went back one more time to confirm that she was still in need of the rescue scheduled for that very afternoon.
She was gone. Not even a sign. I like to believe her mother had been feeding her all along, until she was finally strong enough to venture back into Puget Sound.
At first I wanted to ignore the message about the duck. People post all sorts of reports on Nextdoor and some of them don’t seem particularly reliable. Plus, it was pouring rain outside, and both Robert and I had a lot of work to do. Most of all, between the pandemic and politics, I wasn’t sure I had space for one more ounce of trauma.
But this posting did seem reliable, and it had apparently been written by a compassionate man. He was concerned about a duck who had been entangled in a local pond since at least Saturday morning. Today is Tuesday. I replied to the message and said we’d see what we could do.
An hour later, what a gift it was to watch my husband paddle a small borrowed kayak out to that black and white bird—a ring-necked duck who sat still as a water lily about thirty meters from shore.
Robert gently scooped the duck up into his arms and snipped away the fishing line that had formed a slip knot around his neck. The other end was tangled in woody debris, hindering him from diving or barely moving at all.
When he was released, the duck flew across the pond and landed with a splash. I imagined what that must have felt like after being trapped for four days—the freedom, the relief, the joy of being alive. And right then and there, I decided that, tomorrow, I’d skip reading the news.