Staff writer
Christopher Spencer was outside playing with his brother and sister last week when he saw the family cat, Bella, chasing something along the side of the house.
“She (Bella) likes to catch things,” he said.
When he noticed Bella was chasing a tiny duckling, he sprang into action to rescue the duckling.
Christopher said at first they put the duckling into a cat carrier but it escaped. It escaped again after they put it into a rabbit cage. Finally a box was able to contain the duckling.
“We had to chase him around a lot, and he could escape from anything,” Christopher said.
He tried to feed the duckling carrots and lettuce before his mother got home.
“I really liked the duck and I liked rescuing him,” Christopher said.
Tina Spencer, his mother, said when she came home from work she found the duckling in a cooler.
“He was very cute,” she said. “The kids had put it there to keep it safe from the cats. Our cat is a hunter and would have definitely caught him. He was so little it would have died by the cat.”
Spencer said Bella brings in all kinds of animals she catches. Sometimes the animals are alive, sometimes not.
“She brought in a live bat once, after that we don’t keep the cat door open when we’re not home,” Spencer said.
She said the kids rescued the duckling just in time. It was traumatized but unharmed, Spencer said.
“I dried him off because he was a bit shivery, then we tried to feed him,” Spencer said.
They dug a worm and cut it into pieces for the duckling to eat.
“He ate a little but not a lot,” Spencer said. “I called the vet and she said it’s very hard to get a duckling to eat. I was afraid if he wouldn’t eat he would die.”
The vet told Spencer she should release him near a family of ducks.
“She said ducklings do better if you can find it a family because the mom will adopt him,” Spencer said. “So we took him to the golf course in Peabody because there is water there, but there were no ducks.”
Spencer said someone told her there was a family of ducks that traveled down Spencer’s street to get to the creek.
“So we took him to the creek and released him and hoped he found the other ducks,” Spencer said. “It was an exciting and traumatic event.”
She said she would have liked to have kept the duck as a pet because he was so cute.
“The kids really liked him too,” she said.
Christopher she he thinks he could handle another duckling if he ever found the cat chasing one again.