Earlier this month, a woman named Kelly was enjoying a day out kayaking on Allen Lake in Michigan with her husband, Daniel, and daughter, Lucy, when she noticed a group of ducks who looked “completely out of place.”
Unlike wild mallards, who typically
have brownish feathers, these ducks were bright white, with orange beaks.
But if these were domestic ducks, what were they doing here, out in the wild, on their own?
Fearing the ducks had likely been dumped, Kelly contacted Matthew Lyson at Michigan Duck Rescue and Sanctuary for help.
Lyson and his rescue partner, Mike, rushed to the lake, where Daniel and Kelly happily offered them their extra kayaks. Working together, the family and the rescuers made their way into the marsh and located the group of four ducks. They surrounded the birds and gently plucked them from the marsh into the safety of a carrier.
“Within a very short time, we had all four babies, and they really were just babies,” Michigan Duck Rescue and Sanctuary wrote in a Facebook post. “Maybe a month and a half old, with all their fluff still visible.”
Rescuers are so glad the family did the right thing by calling for help, as these birds surely wouldn’t have made it much longer on their own.
“They had no proper food and zero protection from any predator whatsoever,” the sanctuary wrote. “They could not stay in the water all night, and if they went out of shore, [they would] no doubt [be] picked off within a matter of days.”
Today, all four of these ducks are safe at the sanctuary, their new home.
“[They] are strongly bonded and doing very well,” Lyson told The Dodo.
