The Fowlest Crimes - Modern Farmer

In England, there’s a rash of duck thefts, as well as people stealing fish, pigs and dogs. Last month, police in Lincolnshire, a county on England’s east coast, reported that someone had stolen four ducks from a farm in the village of North Somercotes over a two-day period. Someone also stole 70 fish from a nearby pond. The same month over in Northern Ireland, three ducks by the name of Jemima, Pete and Agnus, were nicked from an assisted living facility in the town of Comber. Finally, in December, there was a series of of duck thefts from a pond in the village of Earith, in Cambridgeshire, a neighboring county to Lincolnshire.

A news report from June 2014 indicates the increase in animal thefts in the British Isles had to do with drug addicts who switched from stealing scrap metal to nabbing pets and livestock because the animals were easier to unload. There may be another answer when it comes specifically to duck theft. A reader wrote into The Guardian Newspaper to try and find out whether he could steal a duck from a pond and eat it without facing arrest. The responses from other readers: It depends.

Stateside, in Gulfport, Florida, in May, residents were facing possible arrest when they banned together to save a duckling that had managed to get a plastic ring from a 2-liter soda bottle stuck around its tiny neck. Initially, the police stopped the efforts due to local laws prohibiting interacting with wildlife, but soon the officers were also involved in the rescue effort, which was ultimately a success.

In the U.S., there were more reports of crime related to fake ducks than real ones. In March 2014, four men were arrested in Lafayette, Louisiana, on felony theft charges after they allegedly made off with a giant inflatable duck that belonged to the local Boys & Girls Club. Police released a video still of the getaway vehicle with the inflatable waterfowl on the car’s hood. The duck was recovered.

In December, a hunter in Pennsylvania had more than 100 handmade duck and goose decoys worth about $8,500 stolen off the Susquehanna River near the village of Peach Bottom. Whoever stole the decoys had quite a lot to haul, as the fake birds weighed more than 660 pounds.

Speaking of imitation ducks, or at least imitating a duck, apparently in Texas you should not taunt your neighbors or police officers by pretending to be a waterfowl. In Friendswood, a city near Houston, a man was arrested in May 2014 for allegedly bothering his neighbors by blowing a duck call at them. When police arrived, the drunken man began to “taunt them” with his duck calls and was charged with a noise ordinance violation.

Now back to the real thing. As we said before, sometimes duck-related crime is perpetrated on the waterfowl, and sometimes vice-versa. Back in 2014, a Washougal, Washington, woman sued the owner of a duck she claimed viciously attacked her without provocation two years earlier when she went to visit her mother in Oregon. The woman said during the attack she fell and suffered several injuries, including a broken wrist. She was asking for $275,000 in damages. It’s unclear whether the suit was ever settled.

So whether victim or perpetrator, ducks are sometimes at the center of the criminal world. Keep your eye on your waterfowl (real or fake), since it could end up getting nabbed, or it could turn on you (only the real ones) and take you down for the count.

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