Alleged ‘fowl play’ by a vehicle in Monaco has ruffled feathers in the suburb in recent weeks, and a couple have responded to the issue like a duck to water.
Residents Jamie Jarvie and her husband Blake Abbott have erected homemade signs advising drivers to slow down for the ducks between Point Rd and
Songer St to help keep a family of paradise ducks safe. Jamie says they noticed eight paradise ducklings and their parents at the end of October after landing back in Nelson from a long overseas holiday, and they noticed that “several times a day” the flock was crossing the road.
“That bend, it’s pretty dangerous, even just for a grown adult to be crossing… so that’s why we thought, ‘oh my gosh, these tiny little ducklings have not got a chance, they’re going to get squished’,” she says.
“So, we made the slow down signs not long after we got back because people come around that bend quite fast.”
“It is a bit of a blind corner, if a person doesn’t see a car coming around, and the car doesn’t see people then they’re never going to see little ducklings crossing the road.
“I know that in New Zealand you can hunt paradise ducks… but we still don’t need to be reckless and go screaming around bends and running them over… give them a chance at life, that was the least we could do.”
Jamie says the first sign was installed around the first week in November and the second sign at the Songer St end was installed around two weeks ago ahead of the holidaymaker’s migration.
The second sign was also an extra precaution ensued from a possible on-road duck death which Jamie was informed of on 26 November.
“We noticed that the numbers went down to six… I wondered what happened if it was a cat or a car… and then there was another two that [disappeared] a few days later,” she says.
“It might have been somebody from one of the neighbouring restaurants, they had written on the sign with one of their chalk pens ‘two were killed today’, which made us really sad.”
Jamie says vehicles had since had their ducks in a row when passing through the area and hopes the now four ducklings and their parents can have a soaring summer in Monaco.
“You can visually see cars slowing down, and everybody’s on the lookout for them,” she says.
The ducks have been spotted waddling further down Songer St, so keep an eye out for them if you’re in the area.
