This is Jessica Clewes, and her best friend Denzel.
They met one rainy night, when Jessica’s dad Michael, 70, heard a chirping outside their front door and saw Denzel all alone on the doorstep.
Michael noticed that the baby bird had no mother around, and Jessica (who lives next door) decided to nurse the poor shivering duckling back to health.
She used a heat lamp to warm him up, and fed him worms and corn, and slowly but surely he was back to his old self.
Not only did he start to grow, though, he also became Jessica’s sidekick, and now follows her almost everywhere.
When he was big enough to fly the nest, pampered Denzel didn’t want to leave, so she built him a duck pond and outdoor house, but he prefers to be indoors.
It’s now been our months since he waddled into their lives, and Denzel loves watching TV from his favourite spot in front of the fire. He has outgrown his home-made incubator, but instead loves the log burner.
He follows Jessica and partner, Adam Oliver, 38, around the house in Smallwood, Cheshire, and even sits on their shoulders and nestles into her hair.
Cleaner Jessica, who has experience as a game keeper, said: ‘We love him to bits. He sees us as parents and we have hand-reared him since he was a baby.
‘He sits on my knee at night whilst I watch TV and now it’s cold outside he likes to sit in front of the log burner. He’s never ever tried to fly away and he could do at any point really, but this is all he has ever known.’
Even if he did want to live the life of a normal duck, Jessica worries that he might not be able to survive among the pondlife now that he’s had a taste of humanity.
‘I’m not even sure he knows how to be a proper duck,’ she says.
‘He must have only been a couple of days old when he turned up on my dad’s door in the rain. I want to keep him forever now. We both have an affection for him.’
Jessica considers herself – as well as gamekeepers and farmers that she’s around – massive conservationists. She loves animals, as does Adam, and they look after Denzel like he’s a baby.
Jessica says: ‘One of his favourite things to do with us is sit in the garden and dig up mealworms.
‘He will sit on my shoulder too and I can walk around the house with him on there. When he was young he used to sit on my head. I think he might have seen it as a bird’s nest.
My boyfriend is obsessed with him and they have a special connection for sure. He pecks me sometimes but follows Adam around wherever he goes.’
One thing that the couple haven’t mastered yet is toilet training, so they do find themselves cleaning up after Denzel around the house.
The next steps (or waddles) for the family Jessica is to adopt a female duck so Denzel can start a family.
Jessica is hopeful of one day having her very own duck nursery in her back garden.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2019/12/04/hand-reared-rescued-duckling-hardly-leaves-womans-side-11268819/
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