Duck tales
BY ROSE ADAMS
It was a wild duck chase!
A duck hobbled onto the
tracks at the Eighth Avenue
Subway Station on Wednesday
morning, causing an
hours-long circus to bring the
waddling wayfarer to safety,
according to transit offi cials.
A train service supervisor
spotted the quacker walking
on the northbound tracks just
before noon, and reported the
bird to authorities, according
to Metropolitan Transit
Authority spokesman Shams
Tarek.
Subway operators were instructed
to proceed with caution
as personnel tried to remove
the duck — which took
nearly a half hour. At about
12:25, the subway supervisor
was able to trap the bird under
a construction cone, according
to Tarek.
An hour later, the supervisor
COURIER L 10 IFE, DEC. 13-19, 2019
safely escorted the hen
to the platform, and then carried
her outside the subway
station to prevent her from
jumping back onto the tracks,
Tarek said. After some time,
the employee handed the
quacker to a friendly passerby
who offered to take the
bird home.
The bird hunt didn’t cause
any train delays — although
it did coincide with a separate
slowdown because of a train’s
activated emergency brakes,
Tarek said.
This wasn’t the fi rst time
an animal interrupted service
at the Eighth Avenue station.
In June, commuters spotted a
turkey on the station’s tracks,
and in Aug. of 2018, police rescued
two goats found grazing
by the subway stop, whom Comedian
Jon Stewart adopted
and transported to an animal
shelter upstate.
WHAT THE DUCK!: A quacker waddling along the tracks by the Eighth Avenue subway station on Dec. 4 slowed
down service. Photo by the MTA
Bird waddles onto train
tracks and into hearts