Some feathered friends need to be helped out of a pre-duck-ament at Moody Pond in Cranberry Township.
The township has been encouraging attempts from locals to try to catch some domesticated ducks that were dropped off at the pond earlier this year, and to find the fowl a warm home for the winter.
“We knew — my daughter has ducks, and we knew once we get to the colder months, if the weather freezes, there’s no water, no food,” the township’s manager, Eric Heil, said Thursday. “We’re trying to recruit people to try to capture them and take them in.”
People began to inform the township about the ducks in late spring or early summer, according to Heil, and the township has no idea where the ducks came from.
“There were four white ones that showed up first,” Heil said. “People were calling about them who visited the pond.”
One of the four was injured and didn’t walk correctly, and Heil said the township had a representative of the state Game Commission come out to see it, who confirmed it was injured.
The injured fowl later vanished — “We don’t know if a predator got it, or what,” Heil said. That left only three white ducks, until two domesticated brown ones showed up as well. “I believe it’s been those five that have been there ever since.”
The township in a June Facebook post said though native geese return to Moody Pond each year, the township asks people not to drop off their fowl at the pond.
The latest update Heil had heard as of Thursday morning was one of the white ducks had been caught, but he believed the other four birds are still at large. “They’re crafty,” he said.
A number of people have called the township or even stopped in over the past few months to ask permission to try to catch the ducks, to which the township has given its blessing, but it seems no one succeeded until the lone duck was caught late last month.
“They have our blessing at this point to try,” Heil said, adding that he thinks there has been a recent push in the community to try to corral them before winter.
That certainly is corroborated by the number of comments which offer ideas and express hopes that the birds find a safe home, under the township’s most recent duck Facebook update on Nov. 29.
“We would love an update if someone was able to catch them, to make that known to the public that they’re off to a new home, and no longer exposed to the elements in the winter,” Heil said.
