The man found an abandoned egg, took it home, incubated it, and an unexpected friendship was born.
It sounds like a children’s book story, but it really happened. Riyadh Khalaf was walking through the city of London when he found an abandoned egg, which he took home, incubated, and from that, an unexpected friendship began.
In a video made by Khalaf and shared by the Instagram page of “The Dodo“, he shares the incredible experience of becoming the mother of a beautiful duckling. “We just found what we thought was a duck egg,” he says, showing the little white egg in a pile of dirt.
Khalaf noticed there was no nest nearby, so he wrapped the egg in a napkin, placed it inside a paper cup, and took it home.
He mentions in the clip that he had some experience with birds and knew that the egg could survive for a while in a dormant state. To check if the egg was viable, Khalaf ordered an incubator, and that’s when his journey truly began.
Seeing that the little bird was alive, Khalaf started following its development daily, using the time the “baby” spent in the egg to learn everything he could about ducks.
After 28 days, the egg finally started to crack. Khalaf tried to follow the entire process, which can take up to 48 hours, but he ended up falling asleep and woke up to the sound of tiny peeps. “There was just a little wet alien staring at me,” he says. “It was love at first sight.”
Khalaf named it Spike and did everything to make sure the duckling was well, even installing mirrors and buying a plush duck so it could see another creature like it and learn to eat food with its beak.
He also placed Spike in a bathtub to swim, cared for its food, and as the duck grew, Khalaf took it to the park to get it used to the outdoors.
After 89 days, Spike was taken by Khalaf to an animal rehabilitation center, where it was placed in an outdoor facility with other ducks like it, where it could choose whether to stay once it learned to flap its wings.
A few weeks later, Spike had adapted, its wild duck colors developed, and to Khalaf’s joy, it could now fly.
This content was created with the help of AI and reviewed by the editorial team.
