Buck the duck a familiar beak in Lower Prior Lake

Prior Lake American

As a good mother does, Prior Lake High School sophomore Bailey Crouse worries about her son, Buck.

He is a duck, after all, and people might feed him bread.

“I’m such a mom,” Bailey said. “I always get worried. (Bread) gets all sticky and they keep it in their throat, so they can get stuck on it.”

Though Buck was raised by Bailey, he has since flown the nest (literally and metaphorically) and is now a familiar beak for boaters and homeowners around Lower Prior Lake.

While she was scrolling through her phone earlier this year, Bailey found a video of someone who owned ducks. She had been begging her dad, Prior Lake resident Mark Crouse, for a dog, but figured a duck would be a good compromise.

“We’ve lived on the lake our whole lives, so why not get ducks?” Bailey said. “We have a back area we don’t use.”

Bailey and Mark went to the Tractor Supply Company on Highway 13 in late April and picked up two ducklings — Daffy and Daisy, the latter would later be renamed Buck when they discovered he was male.

“They were so cute,” Bailey said. “At one point for a couple of days, they came to me when I whistled. It was only two days, but it was a good two days.”

At first, the ducks lived in the garage with a gravity water filter and feeder.

“That faded because they smelled so bad,” Bailey said. “It was horrible. ... They were so stinky.”

When they were ducklings, Daffy and Buck were a lot of work, Mark said.

“They’d be out running around and (Bailey would) be trying to collect them up to do stuff and she said, ‘no, no, no’ and she was like, ‘they’re going to hate me,’” Mark said. “I was like, ‘you sound just like a mom.’”

The ducks were then moved to the shed with a heater.

“If it was ever storming outside, I’d sit out there with them with a towel,” Bailey said. “Eventually, I just started letting them go in (Lower Prior Lake) when they were older because I thought I was going to release them when they got old enough.”

At one point, the ducks were in the lake and Bailey had to leave for a nail appointment. They weren’t responding to her calls to come back to the shed, so she left them.

“I left them alone, unattended for like an hour and they were still there, so I just let them free because I was like they’re probably not going to go far,” Bailey said.

And they didn’t, until there was a thunderstorm. After a massive peal of thunder, Daffy was gone, but Buck remained.

Bailey said she doesn’t know if Daffy returned, because Daffy looked like a regular, brown duck. Buck, on the other hand, is larger than the average duck and is white.

“He hangs out over at the beach or he’ll just be in the middle of the lake,” Bailey said. “He doesn’t go anywhere out of this bay. ... I don’t know where he sleeps.”

Getting comfortable

Bailey and Mark said they usually see Buck at least once a day, oftentimes by feeding him from their boat. Of course, Buck has now associated boats with food.

“A lot of boats feed him, because he swims up to the boats,” Bailey said. “I’ll look out my window because I hear screaming and I’m like, ‘oh, it’s probably Buck terrorizing some kids.’ He flaps his wings when he gets near a boat for food and it scares some people, so it’s pretty funny. ... I’m just glad he acclimated so well.”

There has been one hiccup to Buck’s lake life — a snapping turtle tried to take him down one afternoon, which Mark saw from his office window.

“Buck was in the shallow waters and his wings were just flapping, but he wasn’t going anywhere,” Mark said. “I saw a huge snapping turtle had a hold of his foot or leg and was trying to take him in. I did what any good grandfather would do, I ran out and saved him.”

Other than that instance, Buck has made some friends. Bailey said she saw him swimming with a muskrat, though Mark said that Buck and the muskrat “aren’t tight ... they’re more acquaintances.”

Mark said he’s seen several groups of people feed Buck by hand from their boats and that he’s been asked if he’s seen the white duck that hangs around the area.

“I was like, ‘that’s my duck,’” Mark said.

Bailey said she doesn’t think she is going to get more ducks, but she does have a lizard and a cat.

“They were a lot of work and I don’t feel I could do that again at this point,” Bailey said.

Mark said he’s hoping to replace the rock shoreline at his home with sand so Buck comes around more because Buck sleeps on the neighbors’ beaches and doesn’t like the rocks.

“Hopefully, he’ll come back and make it home,” Mark said.

If people see Buck, they are welcome to say hello — just don’t feed him bread.