The muscly patrons at a North Vancouver gym showed they have soft spots this spring, jumping in to save four unhatched ducklings and bring them to life.
Staff and clients at It’s Time Fitness Results noticed a female mallard hanging around a patch of grass just outside the gym doors in early April. A short time later they were delighted to find the duck tending to a nest full of eggs.
“To choose such a location she must have been a fitness enthusiast like ourselves,” trainer and duck chronicler Andrea Brennan wrote in a touching blog post about the event.
The natural connection turned tragic in early May, however, when one of the gym’s trainers came upon a sad scene during a routine duck check. The mother was found dead, many of her eggs smashed.
“It looked like there was a bit of a kerfuffle. There was blood and feathers all over the nest area,” Brennan told the North Shore News. “We don’t know what happened. Poor mother duck.”
Not all was lost though. Digging into the nest, the trainers found four seemingly unharmed eggs.
Not wanting this duck tale to end, they brought the eggs into the gym while they looked for some sort of wildlife refuge to take them in. They were told by animal rescue staff that unhatched, motherless eggs are not normally viable, and they were advised to just “leave them out and let nature take its course.”
That answer didn’t carry any weight with the fitness trainers.
“We couldn’t,” said Brennan, adding that it was an easy decision for them to try to incubate the eggs themselves and get them to hatch. “We became attached to these four little eggs. We just decided that we’d try our best, and if they didn’t make it we knew that at least we’d tried.”
There was only one problem: they knew next to nothing about raising duck eggs. Frantic Googling ensued while they did their best to make a bootleg nest.
“We kind of didn’t know what we were doing, to be honest,” said Brennan. “We had them in a salad bowl to begin with.”
Everyone in the gym stopped training while they fetched a box, towels, a hot water bottle, even a heated blanket from one of their massage tables.
“At one point we thought we might have cooked them because it was so hot,” said Brennan. Soon enough, however, they got the temperature to the preferred 37 C and the eggs were as safe as possible given the circumstances. The trainers then took to “candling” the eggs several times a day, shining a bright light at the shell to reveal what was going on inside. As the days went on they could see the unhatched ducklings growing inside their shells. They took turns tending to the eggs, with one trainer bringing them home every night just in case they hatched during non-business hours. Then, five days after they took them in, the hatching began. It was May 13. Mother’s Day.
“It was really surreal, really emotional,” said Brennan. “There were a few tears in the gym. … When they finally started to hatch it was almost like a sense of disbelief, like ‘Oh my God, we’ve done it. We’ve helped these little things into the world.’ It was just a really, really beautiful moment. And for that to happen on Mother’s Day – we all became duck mothers.”
Three hatched on Mother’s Day and were given the names Bill, KettleBill and BarBill. A fourth arrived one day later.
“We called him DumbBill,” said Brennan. “He needed a little extra time.”
Then came the hardest part – giving the ducks away. The Wildlife Rescue Association of BC in Burnaby was ready to take the baby ducks, and the quicker the better to limit their contact with humans.
“It was really emotional saying goodbye,” said Brennan. “But we knew we were doing the best thing, we wanted them to have as little human contact as possible. We wanted them to be at a place where they could thrive. Ultimately it was the best thing for them. Although it would have been nice to have some little gym ducks, following us around, helping us tidy up weights and train our clients. It would have been really cute.”
The ducks have gone off to a new life in the wild, but their spirit remains in the gym. Staff will be selling $35 T-shirts with the slogan “The best duckin' gym in town,” with all profits going to the rescue association. A client also painted a triptych featuring the ducks, which will be auctioned off to raise more funds for the refuge.
Everyone who was involved in the rescue just can’t stop thinking about those ducks, said Brennan, adding that they all have made a major change in their diets.
“None of us have eaten eggs since,” she said. “It doesn’t sound much, but given that we’re all protein junkies, we have to have protein at every meal, none of us have been able to look at eggs the same way.”
A framed photo of the ducks now hangs on the wall of the gym. The whole incident has given staff and patrons a new sense of community.
“We’re in the business of health and wellness,” said Brennan. “We wanted to give these ducks the best chance to live a long, healthy life. What amazed me was just how invested everybody was in keeping these little itty bitty ducks alive. It just brought us together like a sense of community. We were all bonded over these ducks. It’s two weeks on and everybody is still talking about these ducks, wondering how they’re getting on.”
To order a charity duck T-shirt you can contact the gym at 604-988-8463 or by email at admin@itstimefitnessresults.com.
