Dan's Papers - October 12, 2007 - Chasing the Wild Duck

It's rare to be assigned a story for Dan's Papers in the middle of the night. But last Friday night, I was in the woods on the east side of Flanders Road in Hampton Bays at 11 p.m., trying to avoid the police officers who were assigned to keep onlookers away from what was going on there, which was the moving of the Big Duck. This is the twenty-foot-tall historic structure that looks like a duck, now seventy-six years old, that Suffolk County had ordered to be moved to a new location three miles away.

Twenty years ago, the Big Duck was moved about three miles south on Flanders Road, and I was there. It was moved in broad daylight, on a wooden platform towed by a truck as part of a great parade and celebration that included marching bands, police cars with lights flashing and even an oompah band from the Polishtown section of Riverhead. The move took about three hours.

Last Friday's affair was very different. The public was not permitted to attend. It was done secretly in the middle of a very dark night. And Flanders Road was closed for several hours, with flagmen detouring traffic. It was a somber affair indeed, and, in the opinion of the editors here, a suspicious one. I was to get the story.

The reason for the change - at least how the county explained it in their press releases - was because people today file lawsuits all over the place. The county feared somebody might step on a live electric wire or trip in a pothole or something. There was also the belief that representatives from PETA, the animal rights group, might be picketing the move. This could not be allowed to happen.

I drove west from Bridgehampton and left my car in the Hampton Bays Diner parking lot at 9:05 p.m. I went into the bathroom there and changed into an all black skintight outfit, including black gloves and black sneakers. After charcoaling my face, I put on a black ski mask and then took my black bicycle out of the trunk and very carefully headed north on Flanders Road against traffic towards Riverhead, turning left onto a side road about three miles up and parking in the bushes. There I removed the black leather pack strapped to the bicycle and took out a walking stick, a small audio recording device for my notes and the most high-tech gadget in that pack - a pair of portable infrared military binoculars that strapped around my forehead. I also had a silent duck call whistle, a cyanide pill if all was lost, a small camera, a GPS device and a tiny cell phone set on vibrate. In an emergency, I could call Dan's Papers and they would send out a rescue chopper to look for me. I could light their way with an emergency flare that could be activated by breaking it in half. Other than that, I had no lighting of any kind. It would be an operation completely in the dark.

Leaving the bicycle and the empty pack, I walked through the woods behind the backyards of several small houses along Flanders Road, and then through the underbrush behind the Suffolk County Police Barracks, which I thought might be my biggest obstacle. It turned out to be no trouble at all. Three men in uniform were standing under a porch light out back smoking cigarettes. I could see and hear them perfectly. They were talking about the New York Yankees, Joe Torre and the playoffs.

About half a mile past the police barracks, pushing through some sticker bushes, I got seriously stung by a swarm of bees. I pressed on. At a small stream, an alligator grasped my left leg in his jaws, but I fought him off. And a quarter mile after that, I encountered bats. Soon, however, the underbrush opened up into the pony ring just behind the Big Duck itself. I stood motionless at the back end of the pony ring and looked across the pasture with all the pony dung in it directly at the hindquarters of the Big Duck. She sat mute and graceful, dignified and apparently unaware of what was about to happen to her. It was 11:15 p.m. And so I laid down in the pasture, put some of the dung on the bee stings and waited.

At 11:45 p.m., I could hear noises by the Big Duck. There were people with lanterns and flashlights. There were police cars and trucks that said Guy Davis House Moving on the side of them. Aha! Davis was the one to be making the move! I whispered a note into the tape recorder. Then, I tried the night vision goggles. I could not get them to work. I tried again, looking through the other end, but it was no use. I had forgotten the instructions. I cursed softly. Then, I took out the Nikon and took the picture you see at the top of page 15.

At 11:55 p.m., I took out the silent duck caller and blew it. Immediately, the eyes of the duck, actually red taillights from a 1922 Model T Ford, blinked on.

I blew it again. My hope was that the duck would turn around and face where my call was coming from, and I could get a better picture, but that did not happen. Instead, I heard one frightened quack. Then, a lot of agitated voices. Then, I saw an aluminum ladder placed against the duck's neck followed by the sound of firemen carrying a huge, white blindfold up the ladder to place around the duck's eyes. The red taillight eyes were now no longer visible. And there was a second frightened quack. It was unmistakable.

At that moment, I felt a sharp pain in my back. There was a horse standing on me. I let out a groan. And after that I do not remember much until I woke up here in Southampton Hospital.

I have a hairline fracture of a rib, apparently caused by a hoof stepping on the titanium GPS system in the nylon strap holster on my left shoulder blade.

I expect to be here about a week. I don't know about surgery yet. As a matter of fact, I am pretty groggy from whatever it is they are giving me for pain.

People from the paper have visited me here. I am being charged with trespassing, impersonating a ninja, which is apparently a crime in Southampton under the section on proper apparel, being a Peeping Tom, causing a disturbance and illegally interfering with a government operation. I am also being charged with illegal possession of military night goggles, failing to properly use them and frightening County owned domestic animals.

The Big Duck began its move, I am told, soon after the ambulance took me away, and was relocated to its new spot on the side of the road three miles closer to the Riverhead Traffic Circle, with the road re-opened when the job was done at 3:45 a.m. Apparently, what I thought was a blindfold was a feedbag filled with dead fish to keep the Big Duck content while on the move. Who knew? I'm told she slept the whole way.

Anyway, you can visit the Big Duck, from which chicken eggs, ducks and roasters were sold to the motoring public from 1931 until 1961 when it went out of business. In 1988, the County bought the duck and moved it. And now, on October 6-7, the Duck was moved back after the County bought the previous location.

I'm told that Dan's Papers is scheduling a fundraiser for my medical and legal fees to be held in the Dan's Papers parking lot in Bridgehampton on October 14. I very much appreciate that.