On Christmas Eve, two Pekin ducks were found frozen to a pond in Smithville, Ohio. They flapped their wings and squawked, fruitlessly struggling to free themselves until two locals, Maiara and Helder Bertolucci, spotted them. The pair slid on their stomachs over razor-thin ice and chiseled the animals free.
“We’ll get you out of here, ok?” Maiara said in a video recording of the incident, cradling one of the ducks in her lap.
The rescued ducks—later named Olaf and Elsa, after characters from Disney’s Frozen—were two of 109 domestic ducks abandoned in a pond outside of a restaurant. A local group called Good Sprout Rescue and Sanctuary rescued the animals; two died, but the rest were rehomed to sanctuaries or adopted. Every spring, the Barn Restaurant would buy a hundred new babies for its patrons to enjoy—but since this incident, they’ve promised not to do so again.
Every year in springtime, particularly at Easter, many people “impulse buy” ducklings as gifts, often for their kids. People associate baby animals like ducklings, chicks, and bunnies with springtime, says John Di Leonardo, an anthrozoologist and president of the animal-advocacy group Humane Long Island. (Read more about how bunnies are often abandoned around Easter.)
But after the holiday, sometimes months later, animal rescuers routinely see an uptick in abandoned adult ducks in local parks and ponds, Di Leonardo says. There’s no official data on how often this happens, but he estimates tens of thousands of domestic ducks are dumped each year throughout the U.S. His organization rescues as many as 500 ducks per year in the New York City area alone.
Elsa and Olaf’s plight highlights how domestic ducks don’t thrive in local parks and ponds—and assuming they will is “pretty similar to going to Yellowstone and seeing a wolf and being like, ‘Oh, if this wolf can survive, my dog can survive,’” says Adison Smith, president of the Utah rescue Wasatch Wanderers.
Dumped ducks lack foraging instincts, and many quickly starve to death or succumb to illness. A majority cannot fly because of their tiny wings; domestic ducks have smaller wings and larger bodies than those of wild species. They don’t migrate, so if they survive until winter, “we often find them frozen to the water,” Di Leonardo says—“literally sitting ducks for predators.”
Ducks can be messy, producing more waste than other pets. What’s more, domestic ducks—which can live up to 12 years—can’t be kept inside, and outdoors, they require a predator-proof enclosure. The birds can also imprint on humans, and once they do, they can’t be left alone. “Even if you leave them for 30 seconds,” Di Leonardo says, “they're terrified.”
Of course, there are plenty of people in the U.S. who properly care for their pet ducks, which can be sweet and curious companions. Audrey Quillin, director of Good Sprout, describes the array of personalities at her rescue—there’s the duck that’s afraid of water, the loner, the thrill-seeker, the lovebirds. (Are animals 'people?' Read about the fight for animal rights.)
It can be hard to spot the differences between wild ducks and the more than 40 varieties of domestic ducks, but because domestic ducks are often bred for meat, they’re up to three times larger. Their feathers are also more ornamental—pure white or with beautiful coloring—rather than camouflaged.
If you’re unsure if a duck in distress is wild, Quillin recommends calling your local farmed animal sanctuary or humane society. “It's always better to ask,” she says.
‘Short, brutal lives’
The day after Quillin’s first duck—a Pekin named Chocobo—died, she was driving by a local park and saw six white domestic Pekins, just like her beloved pet. “I stopped and I gathered them all up. They were so hungry that they just literally walked into my arms,” she says.
Since then, she’s rescued hundreds more. “It's gotten to the point where if I go to the park, I can't even walk down to the pond anymore. It gives me so much anxiety.”
As a resource for duck rescuers across North America, Di Leonardo started the Duck Defenders project, which advises local animal groups on how to deal with abandoned pet waterfowl. “We’re one of the only groups doing this in the country,” he says.
The issue is largely a lack of education, which is why Smith has been campaigning to raise awareness. So far, she’s hung more than 50 signs in a dozen cities warning parkgoers that pet ducks won’t survive in the wild, and that dumping them can be illegal by state law. “Our goal is to get the problem at its source,” she says. Most people tend to buy ducklings at farm and tractor supply stores for less than a dollar each, or kids take them home from school hatching projects.
Though most abandoned ducks live “short, brutal lives,” Quillin says, Olaf and Elsa, rescued from the frozen pond, are among the lucky ones—they’ll spend their remaining days at Lasa Sanctuary in Wooster, Ohio, in a shelter with other ducks, clean hay, and protection from predators.
“It's a really beautiful thing when they feel safe and they feel secure, their personalities really start to come out,” Quillin says. “They all deserve to feel that safety.”
