Delano Herald Journal

Serving the communities of Delano, Loretto, Montrose, MN, and the surrounding area

Jennifer Gallus Column, 4/9/07



As promised, I’ve put together some of my favorite “ducks in flight” photos. I can’t express the amusement I get from watching these guys fly around all the time.

Ducks are always busy, either foraging, swimming, or flying. Only a couple times a day do I catch them snoozing with their bills tucked under a wing.

Maybe that’s because we have a large dog who likes to stalk them, but he only does that from time to time. I have to say, for a Golden Retriever to leave them alone as much as he does, it’s pretty impressive.

Egg production is coming along quite nicely. We seem to have eggs busting out of the cracks of the brooder house. Last weekend I started to incubate some.

So far, I only have two females sitting on nests – one goose and one duck. However, it’s early yet and I expect more “nesting Nellies” to get the itch and settle down on their own nests.

Duck story from my dad

As I’ve stated before, my dad loves to send me story ideas and this one is pretty unusual.

It was reported by the Associated Press that a duck had been shot by a hunter, placed in his refrigerator (uncleaned for some reason), and found two days later by his wife who said the duck lifted its head and looked at her when she opened the refrigerator door.

The wife brought the duck to a vet who performed an operation to repair some of its gunshot damage. During the operation, the duck stopped breathing, but was then resuscitated by CPR, no less.

The duck was named Perky. It survived a gun shot, two days of refrigeration, and a near death experience on the operating table.

Maybe they should have named it Mighty Duck!

I have two burning questions about this story. One is, what did the hunter/husband think of his wife taking this duck to the vet?

What was supposed to be somewhat cheap “food on the table” turned into a very large vet bill, I would assume. I can’t imagine what the cost of the services could have been!

Second, why was the supposed dead duck placed into the refrigerator without any kind of processing?

If my husband were to come home with some feathered fowl or furry critter, you can bet it wouldn’t make it in the house without being properly processed, let alone the refrigerator.

That is odd.

Kid-isms

Upon arriving home after school, a strong manure odor was in the air as we got out of the car. My 7-year-old took a few deep inhales and said, “Do you smell that? That’s the smell of life!”

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