Kapa‘a residents Leighton and Ann Cabreira lost a sense of peace when their duck, “Donald Duck,” died and 13 baby ducks, the duck’s offsprings, disappeared in front of their home this month. Donald duck can’t be replaced, but the couple
Kapa‘a residents Leighton and Ann Cabreira lost a sense of peace when their duck, “Donald Duck,” died and 13 baby ducks, the duck’s offsprings, disappeared in front of their home this month.
Donald duck can’t be replaced, but the couple is hoping to relocate the 13 ducks, the offspring of Donald and his spouse, Daffy.
The baby ducks may have been taken by a motorist as Daffy and they waddled in front of the couple’s home off Kawaihau Road on April 12.
“They were like family. Really, so was Donald, I would just love to get them (the baby ducks) back, if at all possible,” Ann Cabreira told The Garden Island.
The couple has asked Kaua‘i radio personality Ron Wiley and personnel with the Kaua‘i Humane Society for their help in trying to locate the 13 ducklings.
Duck problems surfaced for the couple two weeks before Easter Sunday. Ann Cabreira said she went to a feed store in Kapa‘a to get cracked corn for Donald duck.
The duck didn’t greet Cabreira when she returned home, or later in the day when her husband returned home.
Leighton Cabreira went looking for the duck and saw something that left him stunned and dumbfounded: his pet floated motionless in an irrigation ditch that crosses the couple’s property.
The duck had meant a lot to the couple. Donald duck was a key participant in the couple’s wedding last October. The duck figures prominently in one of the wedding pictures in a wedding album Anne Cabreira keeps by her bedside.
Donald duck was among three other ducklings the Cabreiras had picked up from the former Freitas feed store in Kapa‘a in August 2001.
The other two ducks died, but Donald duck survived and became a family fixture.
The duck liked to sit on Leighton’s lap at home. The duck followed the couple around their home and property and greeted Cabreira’s workers before they went to work on a plumbing job.
The death of a beloved pet has puzzled the Cabreira household. “It is a puzzle, because he was fine when we saw him in the morning,” said Ann Cabreira.
No necropsy was done, and the duck was buried on the couple’s property.
The couple went on an off-island vacation four days before Easter Sunday on April 11.
On their return to Kaua‘i Easter Sunday, an housesitter informed them that Daffy, Donald duck’s mate, began roaming the Cabreira property with 13 ducklings, which Ann Cabreira believes were born on Easter Sunday on April 11.
The Cabreiras welcomed the baby ducks to their family of pets, which consist of two cats and dogs.
The time the ducklings would have with the Cabreiras would be short. On the day after Easter Sunday, one of Cabreira’s workers saw a motorist stop on Kuhio Highway as Daffy and her charges waddled by the road.
Daffy later returned to the Cabreira property, limping and without her ducklings.
“Somebody had to have taken them. They couldn’t have just disappeared on their own. They needed their mother, and their mother needed them,” Ann Cabreira said. “We miss Donald, and the ducklings. It would be nice to continue the family.”
Anyone with information on the whereabouts of the ducklings can contact the Cabreiras at 822-5099 or anlei@gte.net
Staff writer Lester Chang can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 225) and mailto:lchang@pulitzer.net
