Yet another animal neglect thread. Ugh. Our neighbors down the road have a long history of animal neglect. I'll spare you the details, suffice to say we've seen a lot of calves die, small animals, and the horses......(I intervened with the last horse and the county got involved. It was a very smart horse, hopefully it is making someone a terrific friend). Anyway, for the past ~5 years, they've had only dogs. Perhaps not the best cared for, but they aren't skin and bones and outside with no shelter. About 2 months ago, someone gave them 2 ducks. I almost cried when I saw it. They're in a pen in a front corner of the front yard, you see them clearly as you go up and down the road. I also noticed the little tub that was in there never had water in it, and I never saw food. At some point, I noticed the smaller one looked really thin (I've never seen a skinny duck before) and short story is that 3 days ago, it was dead. Apparently they noticed today. I've stopped by to see the duck several times, it has always been very interactive, and the night it's buddy died, it was very sad. It came up to the fence and just started a series of quiet, small quacks.... The next night it quacked loudly, I think it wanted something. Also last night, the weather changed and it's approaching freezing at night. I went down to talk to "the people" today. Made friendly chitchat and asked about duck (they work at the local store, so someone might have given it to them there) and if they wanted it (or had just "gotten it off someone's hands). I offered to buy it, fifty bucks, LOL. Turns out her cousin gave it to her. She had, as usual, a long story about why she couldn't take care of it, but as soon as X happened, she would take care of it/keep it the way she wanted to. It's the usual BS. And nothing changes. I went and looked at the duck again, and it didn't even get up, just looked at us and then put its head under its wing. I don't know ducks very well, but its feathers don't look healthy to me. They are what I called "staring", a slightly lifted look, and dry. Anyway, her cousin lives nearby also, I can see their place out the window. They have a cute, large chicken house and I assume they take good care of their birds.
I was going to go talk to the cousin briefly tonight. Not to be accusatory, etc., but to let her know I'd talked to "Shannon". (Shannon said she would have to ask her anyway, since she gave the ducks to her.) I wanted to tactfully broach the topic of the duck and in the same vein tell her why I'd offered to buy it. Very tactfully........ I asked DH to come with me (as an emotional support animal, LOL) as he had come with me to talk to Shannon. He said No, and was quite adamant, it was "crossing a line". I was a bit surprised, the intent is not to cause "triangulation", etc., the intent is to save the duck. He said Shannon said she was going to do something about it, and I had sent my message. He also acknowledged that the track record of Shannon doing anything is 0. But he still says No. I will go by myself if I have to, but wondered what others reactions are to this. I will also add that I don't think that duck has a lot more time unless the dead duck changes their behavior. My experience is their attention span is about 48 hours. What would you do? Best friend says steal it. LOL. I would also add that I never fully appreciated how cute ducks are.
- duck resized.jpg (40.42 KiB) Viewed 3240 times
