Will homeless duck quack under strain?
Cover
your ears Pawa.
Yes, youve got the bright yellow gormless stare down pat. And yes, youve lorded over Waipawas main street for almost a decade.
But the powers that be (Central Hawkes Bay District Council) have decided youre no longer, ahem, appropriate.
Passé they say. Grotesque. Youre banned from council land to the river, they decree.
Your owners, the local Chamber of Commerce, are rather flustered by the decision.
Stephen Jenkinson says its just not right to perch you, Pawa, out of sight in the scraggly riverside grass. Hes worried youll meet the same fate as the wrecked picnic tables and graffitied skate bowl.
And he loves you dearly.
Waipawa without the duck is like Don Brash without his calculator. Like Helen Clark without airbrushing.
A website set up by your creator, Jan Gosling, records every scrap of information written about you. Its had over 30,000 visitors youre a very popular duck, online at least.
So the nice Mr Jenkinson is on the lookout for a new home for you. A shop front verandah, perhaps, or maybe some telecom-owned land.
And, he says, a meeting next week will decide your fate.
Typifying the split opinion, one visitor logged in this entry to his online travel diary:
One thing that I dont like about Waipawa is that it has a huge statue of a yellow duck that was obviously modelled on the yellow bathtub toy. This statue sits on a plinth right in the centre of town. There is no escaping it.
Lisa, my partner, loves Pawa (for that is the ducks name) and glorifies it. She believes that the duck is Waipawas chance of fame in the realms of large town icons.