An arrow sticking out of its tail didn't slow a black Muscovy duck down much in the water at a Tarpon Springs mobile home complex.
For over an hour, trapper Mike Santo paddled around the pond at the Meadows mobile home park, trying to wear the duck down.
"One of us was going to give up, wasn't going to be me," he said.
Finally, the duck went to shore where the exhaustion and the arrow tripped the duck up, allowing Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary rescuer Fred Hale to catch it in a net and carry it away to get the arrow removed.
"You don't want them to suffer any more than you have to," Hale said.
Ironically, Santo was recently hired by residents at the mobile home park to remove the ducks that live at the pond because their droppings were becoming a nuisance, not rescue them. But when the duck was seen with the arrow, Santo volunteered to help save it.
"It's the right thing to do," Santo said.
No one knows who shot the duck or where it happened.
Doctors were able to remove the arrow and the duck will have a permanent home at the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary.
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