Pata

"Found duck in road. Please advise."

This is the text I got from my brother Angelo a few months ago.

It was raining and the duck was laying on the road, somewhere in the valley. Ang scooped him up, headed towards Coldwater Canyon, and honked his horn when he finally arrived at the animal hospital in Beverly Hills.

She spent the next couple months with me at the animal hospital, nursing a bum leg. She stayed in one of the indoor/outdoor dog runs that we use to board large breed canines.

During the day, she floated around in old steel cat litter trays filled with water, and slept in a dog bed that used to belong to a tiny poodle named Napoleon.

Her limp started to disappear. Slowly but surely.

The more duck bites I collected on my hands (I never knew ducks bit-but they totally do), the closer I knew she was to venturing back out into "the wild" that was the San Fernando Valley. After some careful consideration, and looking into the social patterns of female ducks, we decided that Pata was due for a promotion.

Ang re-released her at some big, beautiful duck pond in Alhambra, which he described as

"...a step up from Lake Balboa, for sure."

I hope she likes her new domicile because she was super cool. For a biting duck.