Cameron Penney
While it was cool and rainy on the weekend, it was lovely weather for a duck—which 11-year-old Chloe Dolyny and her pet duck, “Waddle,” certainly can attest to.
Dolyny has hatched ducklings in her backyard before but Waddle is the first one that became a family pet.
The youngster usually will hatch duck eggs and then donate them to local farms. But a unique situation saw Waddle imprint on Dolyny and begin to think of her as the mother.
The Dolyny family only had one egg to hatch last summer and when it became apparent it was about to hatch, they brought it inside.
“I brought it into the kitchen that night . . . then the first thing it saw was me,” Dolyny recalled, noting Waddle hatched right on the kitchen table.
“It’s fur was all wet and everything, so we took some hay and put it in a box for that night,” she added.
“We stuck it in a warm place—which was the drawer under my bed. [And] the next morning, she was all fluffy.”
“Chloe had other ducks and we had a drake, too,” said her mother, Charmaine Langlais.
“So they had eggs, and we had chickens, and it was a duck and a chicken that was taking turns sitting on this nest,” she noted.
“We noticed it was hatching and no one was really around it at that point, so we took it inside.”
Ducklings are know to imprint when they hatch; the first being they encounter once they hatch immediately is presumed to be their mother.
Since the first thing Waddle saw once she hatched was Dolyny, she imprinted as the mother to it.
“We’ve had other ducks and chickens before but nothing like Waddle,” Langlais said.
“She’s a pet, she comes inside and the others never did,” she added.
Having a pet duck is a unique situation—and one that Dolyny doesn’t take for granted.
“I love animals so much and I’ve loved having the experience of growing up with her,” she enthused.
“It’s a duck—it’s out of the ordinary,” she grinned.
The family picked up a dog bed for Waddle to sleep in, as well as a set for food and water although it was intended for cats.
“It’s hard to find supplies for ducks,” Langlais laughed.
“She likes to have grass and she likes grain, that’s what we feed her mostly,” noted Dolyny, though adding Waddle also eats fruits and vegetables.
“I bake dog treats and I rolled up some tiny little ones for Waddle, and she loves them,” she enthused.
“She’s kind of half-human, half-dog, half-duck.”
Along with Waddle, the Dolynys also have two dogs—and the trio get along well with one another.
“We have a Lab and he is a duck-hunting dog [but] he never bothers her, either,” Langlais said.
“But probably since he’s been around it since it hatched,” she added.
The family also has brought Waddle to their cabin, though she never ventures far from home.
“She doesn’t swim away,” Langlais noted. “She goes in the water but she will stay close to shore.”
Both Dolyny and Waddle receive plenty of attention when she takes it for a walk down the street.
“Whenever I walk her down the street, sometimes I stop a few cars,” the youngster remarked.
“They’re looking and driving past, some of them will back up and pull over,” she noted.
She’s also brought Waddle to visit schools and day cares.
“Usually when we do go for walks, I have to carry her all the way until we turn back around to go back to our house,” Dolyny explained.
“She doesn’t like going away from her house.”
“If I put her down, she would turn around and go right home without me.”
With Waddle now a permanent fixture in the home, Dolyny has made sure to include her in family activities.
“For Hallowe’en, the kids dressed up as Willie and Uncle Si from ‘Duck Dynasty,’” Langlais recalled, adding Waddle tagged along to trick-or-treating.
“Our Christmas card has Waddle in it,” she added.
“Chloe refused to get in the picture if her duck couldn’t be in the picture.”
