Oh duck!

We got a phone call from BARN yesterday for a rescue.

Unfortunately, Donna was at work and had the car, so I couldn't do it. Natasja asked if I thought Donna's friend that did the course with us would be able to do it. I told her there's only one way to find out, so she rang Lesleigh.

Well Donna got home from work about ten minutes later, so we could have done the rescue. She rang Lesleigh, who was just about to head out and was all excited about doing only her second rescue. Her first one was the lorikeet the day she did the carer's course.

It turned out the animal to be rescued was a duck that was limping and couldn't fly. Now it didn't occur to me at the time, but I've seen this kind of thing in ducks before. I'll tell you about that in a minute.

Donna got a call from Lesleigh later on. "It wasn't contained Donna".

Now I'm not saying that if you find an injured animal you should try and catch it before we get there. It's just that we've gotten used to people doing just that. A rescue usually means turning up at someones house and them handing over a cardboard box full of bird or possum.

So Lesleigh and two other people ran all around someones backyard (a very large one apparently) trying to catch a duck that didn't want to be caught. I'm sure the Benny Hill theme would have been playing in the background.

In the end it flew away.

As I said, I've seen this kind of behaviour in ducks before, usually when they have young nearby. The father will feign injury to decoy a threat away from his kids. I watched a whole family of ducks hold up traffic one day as they crossed the road. Mum was in front, followed by four or five ducklings, then Dad. Dad was dragging one foot and looking really pathetic. As soon as they got to the other side he resumed waddling as normal.

Ducking clever if you ask me.