Published
A Canadian man got the shock of his life after a duck egg he was about to cook for a meal hatched in the middle of his kitchen.
Khim Kaing’s plans to cook a traditional Cambodian meal for his wife were disrupted when a duckling poked its head out of the egg, unexpectedly gifting the couple an adorable new pet.
‘He was out of the egg, so it was like, no eating him!’ Kaing’s wife, Leanne Marlow, said. The couple named the duckling Tiny, and decided to raise him as their own, with Kaing waking up at 5.00am every day to feed and bathe the duckling before he went to work.
‘I got to really take care [of him], [and be] gentle [with him],’ Kaing told CTV News, with Marlow recalling how the tiny bird would sometimes perch on the heads of their children.
After outgrowing his little bathtub, Kaing began taking Tiny with him on rides in his truck, with the duck now following him everywhere he goes.
‘They have a very special relationship. Tiny only wants to be with Khim,’ Marlow said. ‘They go fishing on the boat together. They go out on the lake. They go for walks.’
‘He’s stuck on me!’ Kaing said, explaining that the odd pair have even found a way to seemingly communicate with each other. ‘He makes this special noise… I go, ‘Quack, quack, quack,’ then he starts coming back.’
Tiny isn’t so tiny anymore, but Kaing still feels a responsibility to look after the duck, who is now a fully fledged member of the family. ‘I’m his mom… and his dad too!’ he told CTV.
As would probably be the case with most of us if an egg we were about to fry up suddenly hatched, Kaing and his family have decided that eggs are no longer on the menu, with Tiny having made them realise that the animals ‘come out smart like a human [does]’.
If you have a story you want to tell, send it to UNILAD via [email protected]