RESCUE ME?

*"Screw all of you. I'm outta here." ---The Duck

*Note: after doing some research, I was able to determine the duck discussed below was, in fact, a male. I will refer to him in the third person singular pronoun “he.”

Amma was pulling the car into our parking space when I saw the duck. He was sitting in the space next to ours, minding his own business. His little webbed feet were tucked under him and he appeared to be staring at the traffic beyond the tall iron fence that surrounded our lot. In spite of the early spring season, the sky was a bleak shade of winter and the duck was looking downright glum. I started fretting about the poor thing as soon as I laid eyes on him. I craned my neck, trying to get a good look past Amma.

I’d never before seen a duck in our parking lot. This was all very troubling to me.

“He’s not moving? Is he moving? Oh crap, I think he’s dead! Maybe he’s injured? Why isn’t he moving??”

“Why don’t you wait until we’re out of the car!” Amma sighed, pushing me off of her.

And, of course, she was right. Climbing out of the car, I went in for a closer look and, while the duck remained as still as if it was made out of porcelain or stuffed with cotton, one beady black eye betrayed its concentration by flicking to track my movement.

It was alive, dammit, and I needed to rescue it.

I helped my mom with the groceries once I’d assessed the situation.

“It’s not moving,” I told her (this being the extent of my assessment) as we walked inside.

“What are you going to do about it? What CAN you do about it?” she asked me.

“I’m not sure.”

My brother’s third floor balcony was perfectly situated above the east side of the parking lot, where the duck still sat. When he answered the door, I rushed past him without a word and made a beeline for the Yellow Pages. With directory in hand, I stepped out to the balcony and pulled out my cell phone. Who would help me rescue a clearly disabled duck on a Saturday afternoon?

“What’s going on?” a stunned Shafaat asked, following me out to the balcony.

“Duck. Injured. Help.” I said, pointing towards the parked duck.

“Oh. Of course.” As I rifled through the directory, he stared at the duck. “It isn’t moving.”

“Yes,” I confirmed.

“Who are you going to call?” he asked.

“Dunno,” I replied, peeking at the duck to make sure he was still parked. He was, indeed. “Vet maybe.”

I started dialing the vet.

“All right then. Tell me how it goes.” I could almost hear Shafaat rolling his eyes as he went back inside.

“Animal Infirmary. How can I help you?”

“Hi, my cat Zanadune Khan is a patient of yours. I’m in a bit of a situation and am wondering if you can help me.”

“What’s going on?”

“Well, there’s a duck in our parking lot. It’s just sitting there, not moving. I’m afraid it’s injured. Can you guys do something about this?”

“A duck?”

“Yup.”

“In Jersey City?”

“Downtown.”

“Sorry miss, we don’t deal with exotic animals. Can’t help you.”

“But…but, there must be something…do you know anyone who can help me?”

“A vet who deals with exotic animals,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“Is a duck REALLY an exotic animal?” I asked her.

“If it isn’t a cat or a dog, it’s exotic,” she said authoritatively. “Try calling another vet, okay?”

Click. And, with that, she hung up on me.

I muttered an expletive and embarked on a search for a vet who specialized in exotic animals, finally finding one in Bayonne.

Explaining the parked duck to the receptionist who answered the phone, I asked if the vet could help me.

“No,” she responded. She sounded like she’d been shooting herself up with dog tranquilizers all day.

“Why not?” I demanded. “You guys treat exotic animals.”

“We don’t treat ducks,” was her slow and drawn out response.

“I’ll have you know, a duck is a pretty exotic animal. Why can’t you treat it? I promise I’ll make it dance for you if you treat it.” Lame joke, I know, but I was desperate.

“Honey,” she started, drawing out the term of endearment only like someone half asleep can. “The vet here treats pets. That duck isn’t a pet. It’s a wild duck. We can’t help you.”

“Can you think of someone who can help me?” I asked, making myself comfortable in my brother’s deck chair. I had a feeling I’d be on his balcony for a very long time.

“I dunno.”

This time, I hung up first.

The parked duck remained parked, still staring in the great beyond as if he was trying to decide whether or not to cross to the other side. Stay away from the light, I felt like telling him. Stay away from the light, duck!

I called everyone who had anything at all to do with animals that day. Following the two, totally useless veterinary offices, I called: the local animal shelter (they only deal with cats and dogs, which I deemed discriminatory, at the moment. However, a year or so after this incident, when I DID manage to rescue a duck and a chicken, the same shelter took them in and arranged to send them to a no-kill farm that I had found online…the weekend staffers must all be big, fat liars); an animal shelter in Morristown (I figured they probably had more ducks in the ‘burbs and might be better equipped to deal with them. Turns out they aren’t); the Office of Fish & Wildlife (which is closed on the weekends…since fish and wildlife go on mini-holidays on Saturdays and Sundays…UGH); the police (a very rude officer laughed and hung up on me); the fire department (a very concerned fire fighter brainstormed with me over the phone for a good 15 minutes, trying to come up with how we could help the [clearly] incapacitated duck…his best idea, Fish & Wildlife. Been there, done that, I explained. He WAS kind enough to call and check up on how I was faring in my rescue efforts 30 minutes later); and my mom (“If you put half the effort you devote to rescuing animals into finding a husband, you’d be married by now, Sabila”).

Shafaat was watching television when I stormed inside, at my wits ends.

“That duck needs rescuing! It needs to be saved!” I exclaimed, throwing down the phone directory like a preacher throws down nudie magazines. “This book does me no good!”

“Why don’t you try PETA?” Shafaat suggested, his eyes locked on the television screen.

The clouds parted and a chorus of angels sang an epiphanic song:

If you’ve exhausted all of your efforts to rescue a clearly injured and helpless animal, PAGE PETA!

PETA employees in DC are on call around the clock to help people in animal-related emergencies. So, I paged a very nice young woman (naturally, I’ve forgotten her name) who called me within five minutes. I can’t say I was shocked by her promptness.
I explained the situation to her:

“There’s a duck parked in our lot. He’s parked in a space. Like he’s a car or something. And he’s not moving. No one’s helping me. I’ve tried to call everyone in the Yellow Pages who seems even remotely associated with animals. They can’t help. And did you know that Fish & Wildlife takes the weekends off? What’s up with that?” I think I sounded a lot like that receptionist on dog tranquilizers. Perhaps, like me, she was jaded by the system.

The nice young woman told me that she didn’t expect much more from the “so-called authorities”. She proceeded to unleash a volley of questions at me to evaluate the graveness of the situation: Where did I live? Was the duck responsive to passing cars (to which I repeated that the duck wasn’t moving)? Was he limping when he walked (once again, he doesn’t walk)? Was the duck bleeding? Were there other ducks in the area?

And the questions went on and on until the nice young woman told me in a very stern voice that no one was going to help me and that I would have to take matters into my own hands.

“Find a very big box…a computer box or a television box,” she instructed. “You will drop the box on top of the duck. You will capture the duck in the box. Do you think you can do that?”

“Of course I can!” I responded, even as I had the most ridiculous image of myself chasing down a duck in my parking lot while dragging a giant computer box behind me. But I knew that I wouldn’t be able to rest if I didn’t save that duck, so I was unwavering in my determination to capture the him.

“Are there any parks near by where you can release the duck?”

I told her that there were ducks at Liberty State Park.

“Great. While you try to trap the duck, I’m going to call a duck expert who lives in central Jersey to see if he has any specific advice to give us. I suspect that he’s going to tell us the same thing: that you should try to capture and release the little guy at the park.”

And so I went to the store on the first floor of my building. Tony, the storeowner was able to pull out a giant, empty box from his storeroom, no questions asked, no weird looks passed.

With giant box in tow, I walked out to the parking lot, on my tiptoes so as not to startle the poor duck. I was determined to make a difference. I was going to see this duck to safety, dammit, even if it took all day. If that meant releasing it into the (barely wild) wilds of Liberty Park, so be it. If it involved driving to central Jersey where this duck expert could tend to the duck’s ailments and injuries, so be it. I was going to help because I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t. The picture of that helpless duck, still and parked in the space next to our car, would haunt me for months. And I simply wouldn’t be able to deal.

I stood by our van, which was obstructing my view of the parked duck, trying to prepare myself mentally for the trap. As quietly as possible, I even stretched my quads, making sure that I was ready to pounce on it with the box without any hesitation.

When I felt I was ready to get the show on the road, I walked past our van towards the duck’s spot to find that---

He wasn’t there.

Confused, I spun around in circles, my hands shading my eyes against my own confusion.

The duck was nowhere to be found.

It had disappeared.

I spent another 20 minutes looking under cars. Perhaps he’d caught sight of me marching towards him and, in his fear, had decided to hide?

Alas, this wasn’t the case. The duck was nowhere to be found. And there I stood, staring at the box and thinking about the past two hours.

I returned to my brother’s apartment where, in an undeniably stupid move, I’d left my cell phone. On the phone there was a message from the very nice woman at PETA:

She’d managed to get a hold of the duck expert.

It was something called “grounding” season and the duck was probably just taking a break from its journey.

Ducks can fly, you see. I’d totally forgotten about that minor detail.

Ahem.