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What's killing the ducks?
By EILEEN SCHULTE
© St. Petersburg Times, LARGO -- About a week ago, Nancy Allen looked outside her door at 6 a.m. toward an old oak tree near the retention pond. She expected to see a line of muscovy ducks, mothers and babies, waiting patiently for her to feed them their morning breakfast of wild bird food, crushed corn or bread. But there were no ducks. "I said, "God, where are they?' " said Allen. It was her first inkling a catastrophe had struck the duck population at a 5-acre retention pond at Cleveland Street and Seminole Boulevard. They were all dead or dying. "I felt broken-hearted," Allen said. "Each one has their own personality. There was one out in the water, I called him Spike." Neighbors immediately suspected foul play. None of the small fish in the pond had turned up dead. The turtles seem to be in good health. But the muscovy ducks were dropping like flies. "Usually your first indicator there is a problem is a fish kill," said Mike Sepessy, Largo's environmental specialist supervisor. Victoria Foley, who cares for the neighborhood ducks and is known in the area as "The Duck Lady," called the city of Largo to investigate. She also asked the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary to help rescue the ducks. Foley estimates at least 25 muscovys and a few egrets and morning doves have perished since June 8. Several ill ducks now are being treated at the sanctuary in Indian Shores. Foley said she noticed the same thing happened at this time last year, about the time the young muscovys emerge from their eggs. This time, she made a videotape of the scene. "Look, she said," pointing to a duck's image on the tiny video monitor on the camera. "She was sitting on top of her dead baby. It was her family. She died that evening." Allen said she would watch the ducks out on the water, "struggling to get to shore," until she had to turn away. Whatever is killing the ducks is doing it slowly. "They die a two-day, slow, painful death," Foley said, adding the ducks' legs appear to be paralyzed during the process. The ducks have a few natural enemies in the neighborhood, residents say. Foley and her neighbors say one man once attempted to kill the ducks by luring a group of them into his yard, throwing a cast net over them, and then trying to club them to death. Foley stopped the man and called the police. Allen said some people don't like the ducks because they make a mess on their sidewalks. "But what's a little hosing?" she said. "They are God's creatures. We should help them." As for this kill, neighbors point the finger across the pond to John and Judith Connell, owners of The Flower Gallery Florist & Greenhouse. They say they Connells have long expressed frustration with the ducks because they attack their customers and leave droppings on their sidewalk. Some neighbors said they suspect the Connells have poisoned the ducks. "They're crazy," said John Connell, who said he had no idea the ducks were dying. "I didn't do nothing to those ducks. If they said I'm going after those ducks, get serious. I have better things to do with my time." He said the ducks leave droppings on his property, and once attacked an elderly lady who was trying to enter the store. He said he called the city of Largo to complain, and wondered if they had eradicated the ducks. But that's not the case, said Sepessy. Sepessy won't hazard a guess as to what is killing the ducks, except to say that food poisoning is a possibility. He said the deaths are odd because no ducks have been dying at another pond nearby. "It's very unusual, very site-specific," Sepessy said. "And that raises some questions." On Monday morning, city employees will scour the pond for dead ducks, and if they find one they will either ship or drive it to a pathology lab at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where it will undergo a necropsy. "We really don't run into this situation very often," Sepessy said.
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