NORTH CAPE MAY – What’s the price of a life? If you’re a duck, you might cost $10 at Tractor Supply Company.
While a duck may make an easy Easter present, come winter, those same ducks are often dumped on the sides of roads or into nearby ponds, and meet an untimely demise at the hand of winter’s frost.
Evoy Funeral Home, in North Cape May, has become accustomed to this reality. The pond that glistens in the front of Evoy’s building makes an attractive dumping spot for weary duck owners.
Justin Mogavero, who has done his best to save ducks from this fate, fondly remembers ducks who would nest and swim there when he was a child, but the idyllic sight of roosting ducks betrays the reality that those same animals were victims of negligence, and only survived because locals took the burden of caretaking upon themselves.
As the crisp fall air sharpened into winter, history repeated itself at Evoy. Mogavero, who lives by the funeral home, realized that a batch of newly dumped pekins would die of cold if not given immediate care.
Without any fanfare, Mogavero worked with Evoy to construct a wooden, heated home for the ducks by hand. He was happy to take on the project and worked with Evoy to match the duck house’s colors to those of the funeral home.
Pekin ducks “are not as easy as everyone thinks they are. They can’t be outside when it’s cold. They need a constant water supply to wet themselves, so their feathers stay oiled. That’s why people dump them,” Mogavero said.
“It’s a lot like what happens when people dump older dogs. The same thing happens with ducks. People get them at Easter and then they grow up and poop too much for people’s liking. People think that they’ll be fine in the wild. That isn’t always the case… Don’t dump your animals and expect them to survive,” he said.
Tammy Loveland, who has worked at Evoy for many years, has a different theory on the origins of the ducks who have found their way to the funeral home. She said that their previous duck, Moe, became a beloved member of the community, and perhaps locals put new ducks in Moe’s place after he passed away. She said that “the ducks have always been good company for us. Our previous duck, I called him Moe, became quite the community favorite… We were quite surprised with the community support after we reported his death to the community. People left painted rocks, roses, to commemorate the loss of Moe… I’m sure that the people who put these new ducks here had nothing but good intentions.”
Despite these good intentions, she said that the ducks who now call Evoy home are domestic and cannot survive without care.
“People think it’s a good habitat for the ducks, but the reality is that these ducks are domesticated. They aren’t meant to be dumped,” she said.
Kathleen Mistretta, one of Mogavero’s neighbors, noticed him working on the duck house project in his backyard.
“He’s an incredibly kind, gentle, thoughtful man,” she said. “I think it’s just wonderful when people do work like this, and they are not looking for any attention. It’s coming genuinely from their heart. I think that deserves to be recognized.”
“He’s done other things like this, and he’s kind of like a quiet protector of wildlife working in the background. It was the kindest thing I’ve heard of in a while,” she said.
Though Mogavero’s hard work makes for a pleasant, feel-good story, the animal mistreatment that spurred him to action in the first place is nothing to glorify.
“It’s trouble all around when people dump animals. They become someone else’s responsibility,” he said.
Beyond the shifted burden that comes when owners dump their animals, Mogavero stressed that owners have a moral responsibility to any creature they take into their care.
An animal isn’t a toy, but a deeply complex creature with thoughts and feelings, he said, adding, “Ducks are very social creatures that are smarter than people realize. Their capabilities to learn habits and routines are very amazing to see.
“When I go to put them in the house at night to keep them safe, they hop right out of the pond and follow me. When the girls hear the enclosure open to their house, they start quacking immediately. Their capacity to learn is really crazy. They aren’t dumb. They have personalities and I like to think they have feelings.”
Not everyone has sympathy for animal intelligence or emotion. Stories of dumped ducks, cats, and other animals are common around Cape May County. Part of the reason for this is that animal intelligence is hard to qualify, quantify, or even define.
A 2021 Stanford University study on animal cognition says that defining even an operational understanding of animal emotion comes with “philosophical baggage.” A human understanding of emotions comes from a base-level agreement that human minds operate similarly to each other. This base assumption is not always afforded to animals.
To solve this problem, the Stanford study suggests assuming, on some basic level, that non-human minds can experience emotion and empathy.
A volunteer at Animal Outreach of Cape May, when interviewed for this story, said that it is obvious to them that animals experience emotion. She did not need to “prove” that reality. It is obvious to her in her everyday work with hundreds of animals.
Though the ducks at Evoy have been shown great love, the reality of animal treatment is not always so kind.
To contact Collin Hall, email chall@cmcherald.com.
