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Why Easter is bad for ducks

      On Christmas Eve, two Pekin ducks were found frozen to a pond in Smithville, Ohio. They flapped their wings and squawked, fruitlessly struggling to free themselves until two locals, Maiara and Helder Bertolucci, spotted them. The pair slid on their stomachs over razor-thin ice and chiseled the animals free.

       The rescued ducks—later named Olaf and Elsa, after characters from Disney’s Frozen—were two of 109 domestic ducks abandoned in a pond outside of a restaurant. A local group ________ Good Sprout Rescue and Sanctuary rescued the animals; two died, but the rest were rehomed to sanctuaries or adopted. Every spring, the Barn Restaurant would buy a hundred new babies for its patrons to enjoy— but since this incident they’ve __________ not to do so again.

         Every year in springtime, particularly at Easter, many people “impulse buy” ducklings as gifts, often for their kids. But after the holiday, sometimes months later, animal rescuers routinely see an uptick in abandoned adult ducks in local parks and ponds, Di Leonardo says. There’s no ________ data on how often this happens, but he estimates tens of thousands of domestic ducks are dumped each year throughout the U.S. His organization rescues as many as 500 ducks per year in the New York City area alone.

Fonte: (National Geographic – adaptado.)