“We’ll look after it until the owners come and get it. I’ll take it home with me if they don’t come for it today,” she said. The duckling is in good company in Veitches, surrounded by ornamental and toy ducks, although its proximity to Oscar’s Restaurant and George Graham Meats is clearly making it anxious. Joanne’s concern for its welfare resulted in her calling Erne Veterinary Group, who came round to examine the abandoned bird, and said that it was definitely not a wild duck, and would need to be cared for as it had no real way of keeping itself warm.

    When the students returned to collect the duck later however, Joanne suspected fowl play, as she had heard reports that ducklings were being stolen from crates at the Bus Station. She was unwilling to hand the little yellow duck back to the students who she suspected would mistreat it round the town. Impartial Reporter investigations tracked down the owners of the consignment of ducklings, Thornhill Ducks of Blacklion. Kenneth Moffat, of Thornhill, said that he was unaware if he had lost a few ducks in the last batch, because they take delivery of up to a couple of hundred ducks at a time. “There’s big numbers involved- sometimes we would do spot checks, but we wouldn’t count them individually,” he said. However, he did say that the latest batch, which are delivered to Blacklion from Cookstown on Thursdays, did look as if it may have been tampered with: “I noticed that the box was a wee bit torn, and it was very damp”.