Cricket
Rescue date: Feb 20, 2024 Favourite Food: grapes Best friend: Haven’t found my BFF yet
How does a baby duck end up wondering the streets of Langley? We can only take a guess at her story. But this one has a happy ending. Keryn saw the instagram post above and said Kindred would give her a home. She contacted the shelter and had to wait a couple of days because she was on a “stray hold.” We had to wait to see if her owner claimed her.
She wasn’t claimed, which is very common for farm animals found as a stray. Christine Mayworm and Keryn went to pick her up the next day. This happened just two days after Benny passed away. We just keep on keeping on at Kindred because there are so many animals in need. We will take time to collectively grieve when the time is right.
We decided to call her Cricket because she is so small and does chatter a lot.
Cricket was in quarantine and was slowly integrated into her new bird family. Integrating a new bird to our bird flock can be challenging but we’ve learned a lot over the years. Plus we know our birds so well. We knew WHO would be the problem.
The problem child was Butter Beans. He is a very large male duck and is in his hormonal prime. He doesn’t know it, but he is too heavy to pair up with a little baby. Our animal care volunteers, as always, came up with a solution to keep Cricket safe.
Now when you walk into the duck garden, you are immediately captivated by this tiny, little, gray duck with a blue bill named Cricket. She may be tiny but she has a huge personality and very loud quack. You most often find her floating in one of the duck pools—this is her favourite activity.
Ducks are very social creatures—they need to be part of a flock. And they mate for life. The only eligible bachelor for her at Kindred Farm is Butter Beans but she is not interested at all—she doesn’t appreciate being squished by a very large Peking Duck that’s 4 times her size.
Her favourite place to sleep is under the bench on a pile of straw. We can’t tell you how many times we’ve had to search for Cricket. She is so tiny that many times she’s actually right under our feet!
