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You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Duck Blogging / Ducks To The Rescue!

Ducks To The Rescue!

by | 85 Comments

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This is really more TaMara’s backyard, but it looks like we need a new open thread.

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85Comments

  4. 4.

    burnspbesq

    Not sure 20 million locusts a day will put much of a dent in the current infestation.

    Think about that for a second.

  5. 5.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Thank you, Duck, you’re very smart
    And good at staying focussed.
    So, from the bottom of my heart:
    “Good Duck! Here’s a locust.”

  6. 6.

    senyordave

    Extremely smart on the part of the Chinese, seems really out of the box.  My guess is they came to the US, and Trump put the sharpest mind he knew to handle the task.  Not to worry, Jared is probably coming up with a solution as I type this.

  7. 7.

    burnspbesq

    @senyordave:

    The Chinese are really good at doing things for non-aligned countries, but they do make the occasional blunder. Like the time they gave Costa Rica a state of the art 35,000 seat national football stadium—and built it in a park in San Jose where only 100 parking spaces were available.

  8. 8.

    Eric K

    i don’t know, it seems history is full of stories of the unintended consequences of bringing in a predator to get rid of a nuisance. Cane Toads in Australia just being the most well known example.

  9. 9.

    sdhays

    A single duck can eat more than 200 locusts a day, more effective than pesticides: expert

    Channa Prakash better be careful. Monsanto’s lawyers are probably gearing up to sue right now.

  10. 10.

    Amir Khalid

    @Eric K:

    After the ducks have feasted on all the locusts, they could — conceivably, anyway — be kept as farm animals. You couldn’t do that with cane toads.

  12. 12.

    Ken

    @senyordave:

    “Then in a three-way deal financed by Deutschbank and the Russian oligarchs, we buy three islands off the coast of Iran – ”

    “Jared.”

    ” – and build a chain of 5-star hotels using Filipino labor. Then we sell docking rights in a Vickrey auction, using the proceeds – ”

    “Jared!  What does this have to do with fighting locusts?”

    “….  Locusts??”

  13. 13.

    sdhays

    @Eric K: Are ducks not indigenous to Pakistan? I just assumed that this would supercharge the existing population.

  17. 17.

    Martin

    @sdhays: Likely not the same species. That might matter. New species of duck gorges on locusts, pushes out indigenous species, now whatever pest the indigenous species favored runs out of control while the introduced ducks die off when the locusts retreat.

    Throwing off an ecosystem balance often results in unanticipated  problems.

  20. 20.

    Ken

    @sdhays: I was (ahem) inspired by his quite-similar plan to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict.  I think that one ended up with all the Palestinians staffing a chain of Egyptian and Saudi Red Sea hotels.

  21. 21.

    Achrachno

    @Amir Khalid: The flock in the image is composed of Indian Runner Ducks (probably originally from Indonesia), a domesticated selection out of the common mallard — so they’re already farmyard ready. Apparently champion egg layers too but poor nest tenders.  Scatter their eggs all over the place I hear.  They aren’t going to make problems like cane toads because they’ll never naturalize.

    Note how they all stand erect like penguins, rather than holding their bodies horizontal like most ducks.

  23. 23.

    Bill

    Reminds me a little of this from Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday:

    (Around 1958, while Mao is starving his people while exporting grain to the Soviet Union in exchange for arms and other military and industrial assistance)

    One day it hit Mao that a good way to keep food safe would be to get rid of sparrows. as they ate grain. He designated sparrows as one of “Four Pests” to be eliminated, along with rats, mosquitoes and flies, and mobilised the entire population to wave sticks and brooms and make a giant din to scare sparrows off landing so that they would fall from fatigue and be caught and killed by the crowds. There was much to be said for eradicating the other three, which were genuine pests, though one side-effect was that whatever slight privacy people had once had in performing their bodily functions disappeared, as eager fly-collectors loitered in droves at public lavatories.

    But the case for eliminating sparrows was not so clear-cut, as sparrows got rid of many pests, as well as eating grain — and, needless to say, many other birds died in the killing spree. Pests once kept down by sparrows and other birds now flourished, with catastrophic results. Pleas from scientists that the ecological balance would be upset were ignored.

    It was not long before a request from the Chinese government marked “Top Secret” reached the Soviet embassy in Peking. In the name of socialist internationalism, it read, please send us 200,000 sparrows from the Soviet far east as soon as possible. Mao had to accept that his anti-sparrow drive was counter-productive, and it gradually petered out.

    North Korea’s Kim Il Sung turned out to be less stupid than Mao on this issue. Mao had pressed him to emulate China’s anti-sparrow campaign. To humour Mao, Kim drafted a “3-Year Plan for Punishing Sparrows,” but then did nothing while he watched to see how Mao’s campaign turned out.

  27. 27.

    Calouste

    I read about this a few weeks ago and apparently it was not going to happen because ducks are waterfowl and Pakistan is mostly a desert.

  28. 28.

    Kent

    @Achrachno: We raised Indian Runner Ducks back in Oregon when I was a kid in the 70s.  They were voracious eaters of slugs and snails.

    But yeah, this isn’t going to be some sort of invasive species nightmare.  They are domesticated ducks.  They minute they overstay their welcome they’ll be eaten.

  34. 34.

    Mai naem mobile

    Not sure I would trust any fowl related stuff from China and I am talking about the bird flu not COVID conspiracy stuff.  Off topic El Lumpo has started running a lot of ads in Phoenix. Also too, McSally’s yard signs have started going up on street corners . Personally I am surprised at the color of the signs.  It’s a yellowish beige desert kind of color. Totally blends into the background. Mark Kelly’s is a standard boring blue/white/red sign. I’ve seen blue/red/purple/green/turquoise/lemon yellow political signs but I’ve never seen a beige one before.

  38. 38.

    Achrachno

    @kindness: And why not chickens?  They’re fast and aggressive eaters of insects of all sorts.  And they don’t need a pond.

    Or Guinea Fowl — they’re even faster and are from fairly arid areas so might do better in Pakistan.  Though, I suppose China may not have many on hand.

  39. 39.

    Fair Economist

    Needs a video with some heroic music and slo-mo footage of ducks snapping up locusts.

  42. 42.

    gbbalto

    BBC has reported on duck locust control in China before.  They borrow hundreds of thousands of ducks from farmers, load them on a train, and herd them in a line across the affected area.  The ducks get to stuff themselves and get fattened for free, the farmers get ducks back (probably not the ones they sent), and everyone is happy except the locusts.  I assume that in this case, the ducks will just be given to local farmers afterwards.

  43. 43.

    Lavocat

    Not only does China give a duck, they give 100,000 of them.

    Me? I just don’t give a duck.

  47. 47.

    Amir Khalid

    @Baud:

    The “duck walk” was a Chuck Berry invention. I’ve never seen an actual duck do anything like it.

  48. 48.

    NotMax

    Ducknado! Headline in six months:

    Mass Panic As Voracious 100-pound Ducks Descend On Islamabad

  53. 53.

    pamelabrown53

    @gbbalto:

    Locust fattened ducks? A gastronomical triumph?

    I could be wrong but I think Cheryl might be underscoring how a totalitarian country is consistently aiding countries in need, while our developed democracies creep upwards nativism.

  55. 55.

    Geminid

    I wonder how peacocks and pea hens would do. They can work pretty high in trees. From what I read this an all fowl on deck situation.

  59. 59.

    Roger Moore

    @Eric K:

    i don’t know, it seems history is full of stories of the unintended consequences of bringing in a predator to get rid of a nuisance.

    Ducks are already native to Pakistan.  It’s part of their winter territory in Asia.

  60. 60.

    pamelabrown53

    @Amir Khalid:

    Exactly. The honey is assistance minus judgement. Then when the Chinese want to buy an industry, the “helped” country’s government will be favorably compliant.

  61. 61.

    mrmoshpotato

    @kindness:

    If a duck can eat 200 locusts, how many could a goose eat? 

    Do geese even eat locusts?

    And one goose alone is an asshole.  Who would want 100,000? (Shudders)

  64. 64.

    gbbalto

    I’m thinking that ducks may just be easier to herd en masse than the alternative fowl.  IAN a fowl herding expert, tho.

    ETA – peacocks and guinea hens screech!  I wouldn’t want to listen to a 100K of them.

  65. 65.

    Martin

    Deserving of a mention in a future thread. The driver of the truck that drove through protesters yesterday in Virginia:

    The accused, by his own admission and by a cursory glance at social media, is an admitted leader of the Ku Klux Klan and a propagandist for Confederate ideology

    Still waiting on the deal on the Seattle dude.

  67. 67.

    evodevo

    Great! You can eat them afterwards…on the other hand, 100,000 ducks vs a couple billion locusts might take awhile…

  68. 68.

    Martin

    And we wonder why the MPD is being disbanded.

    Law enforcement in Minneapolis on Monday acknowledged deliberately slashing the tires of parked cars in late May, as protests over the police killing of George Floyd threw the city into turmoil.

    The admission came a couple days after Mother Jones flagged video footage of authorities slashing several cars’ tires, including those belonging to journalists and others who just happened to park in the wrong spot at the wrong time — in this case, a Kmart parking lot and another location.

    No doubt the MPD blamed antifa for this when drivers and journalists reported the incidents.

  70. 70.

    Patricia Kayden

    PARIS (AP) — Security chief: France to abandon police chokeholds, as Floyd’s death sparks anger over French police tactics.— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) June 8, 2020

  71. 71.

    Kent

    @Major Major Major Major:

    @Kent: I don’t know about locusts specifically but guinea fowl are also great for pest control.

    ETA I googled it and they are good for locusts too!

    I expect the Chinese probably have millions of ducks ready to go as it is a major culinary delicacy in China.  They probably don’t have millions of guinea foul or other birds ready.

    Plus the ducks in question are flightless so very easy to herd and control.  And they have a long history of being used for pest control around the world.  https://youtu.be/2ErP1wrHoK0

  73. 73.

    Martin

    @Patricia Kayden: Well, I imagine we’d have better success in the US with policy reforms if we had our fire departments leading the protests.

    It’s just wild watching french FD beating the hell out of french PD.

  74. 74.

    Cheryl Rofer

    I have to congratulate our jackals! Only after 70 comments almost entirely devoted to ducks in some way are other subjects starting to creep into our open thread. Not every almost top 10,000 blog could have sustained that!

    TaMara will be proud of us!

  76. 76.

    Calouste

    @Martin: 1) The tow trucks thing is bullshit, because they should have used wheel clamps if they didn’t want the cars to move. Randomly destroying property does make them nothing better than rioters.
    2) Are knives standard issue for the police? Probably not, in which case the question is why are the police using unauthorized weapons and what other unauthorized weapons do they use?

  81. 81.

    J R in WV

    Possums eat lots of ticks. I note this because we’re in a tick epidemic here, which is nearly as bad as the Covid-19 epidemic. I think guineas eat a lot of them also, too. Probably yard bird chickens do too. I wonder how Possum Queen feels about them?

  82. 82.

    oatler.

    I remember the giant dancing ducks in “Village of the Giants” (also remember Joy Harmon’s hip-huggers but that’s a separate matter).

  83. 83.

    Yutsano

    Retweeted!

    FYI: if it hasn’t been reported yet: I’m not doing so well. Something neurological is going on. I’m trying to rehydrate myself to see if if that helps, but so far it’s not working. Gonna try to get some good sleep tonight and see if that works but if not I’m hitting urgent care tomorrow. They’ve probably send me to the ER but we’ll see what happens. I’m not in any danger of dying so that’s good.

  84. 84.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @Geminid:

    I wonder how peacocks and pea hens would do.

    Peafowl are Himalayan so already available. As pointed out elsewhere, they are also nasty shrieky gobshites. Also, invasive species; and almost inedible short of hanging them for a while to semi-decay (like other pheasants). NZ has a feral peafowl problem. I am not making this up.

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