Wow!!!Hey y’all! I have a nine month old blind Muskovy duck named peepers. When I rescued her we had taken my niece to a pond to feed ducks and I noticed a little yellow dot across the lake that was being picked on and trying to be drowned by two big male mallards. So obviously I knew I had to do something so I walked down to the edge and put my hand in the water and started making peeping noises and this little duck swam all the way across the pond and directly into my hand. Now this poor baby was very waterlogged and the only thing I could think of that would absorb water was the diaper that I had with me for my niece. Seeing as I didn’t have any towels and she was drenched I wrapped her up in a diaper and it helped to take a lot of the water away. I looked around to try and find her mom and there was only one other duck with babies but they were three times her size and as soon as I put her down by the mom, thinking maybe she was just the runt or smaller, the mom came over and started biting her and grabbed her by her neck and started shaking her. Obviously I was not going to stand for this kind of abuse and quickly picked her up wrapped her in another diaper and brought her home. One of her eyes was badly damaged by the mallards so we knew she was blind in one eye, but soon realized she was totally blind. My dad raised chickens and ducks growing up and I am a vet tech and have worked with ducks so between us we had quite a bit of knowledge on how to take care of her. Although at first she was a he until one day I walked up to his pen and found an egg! Imagine my surprise, especially since myself and 3 other techs sexed her as male. So he became she and luckily peepers was a good name either way but she responds to Princess now as well. When we brought her home she still had her umbilical cord attached and it fell off the day after we brought her home so she was not even a day old when all of this happened. She is now nine months old and she has her own little pen in the backyard with a beautiful bed that she gets tucked in and locked in at night to keep her safe, that she absolutely loves and constant clean water and food because she never stops eating and she has her own little pool that she loves. She swims in it at least twice a day and when she’s not swimming she’s roosting on the edge of it. . Also when it was freezing outside she was too little to be outside so she was still in the house. We had rescued her at the end of September so it got very cold very quickly and Texas had one of the worst freezes they’ve ever had. So she moved into the pack and play that my two-year-old niece had outgrown and she loved it. I put a dog bed in there and she slept in there all night that’s where she laid her first egg, and many after, and had a blanket that covered all the edges and sides so she could feel safer and not have the dogs constantly trying to look at her and get in the pack and play. She absolutely loves being in the backyard, we have about a half an acre, and she loves to go out and just go all over the yard but she is usually wherever I am, so if I’m on the patio or cleaning out her bed she is right there and constantly wants to be picked up and held. When she was little she would put her head over my shoulder and lay on my chest and as she got bigger she still does that. Now I have a blind nine-month-old 4 pound female Muscovy that requires to get her snuggles before bed with lots of nuzzling, so she still gets in the same position and throws her head over my shoulder but now she can stand on me and she will stand there and I don’t even have to hold her and I can walk around and do stuff and she just cuddles. We’ve thought about getting her a companion but quickly realized that she is very happy doing her own thing and. She’s not too fond of thunder and lightning and unfortunately this is Texas and we have that almost every week and this year it was almost all month long so she comes inside and sleeps in her pack and play whenever there’s a big storm. Her absolute favorite thing is ice cubes. All you have to do is shake a cup of ice and she loses her mind! Starts frantically trying to find them in her water bowl or pool. She is so good with people and let’s anyone pet her but only me, my mom, and niece can hold her cuz she panics when anyone else tries. She loves a good butt scratch and tummy rub which she only allows me to do since I hold her on her back to do it! I’m terrified of birds, long story, but she acts like a dog with feathers and has completely stolen my heart!
What a precious story. Sounds like to me you found her just in the nick of time.
