By Tim Binnall
A Canadian man was understandably bewildered when he received a mysterious package in the mail containing a taxidermic duckling that sports three heads. The bizarre shipment was reportedly sent to the Nova Scotia home of Brent Braaten, who insists that he never ordered the odd item despite his name being on the box. When he opened the parcel, the Halifax resident recalls, "I tore away at the plastic and packaging and then one of the duckling's faces emerged and I immediately sort of jumped back."
The weirdness was quickly compounded, he said, when he took a closer look at the surprising shipment and saw that "there were three duckling faces staring back at me." Conceding that he occasionally does a bit of online shopping after having a few drinks, Braaten suspected that perhaps he had bought the oddity following one of those revelrous evenings. However, a check of his bank account indicated that was not the case, which only mystified him further because his name was on the shipment label. "They were definitely intended for me," he said, "but I certainly did not order these ducklings."
All that Braaten has been able to decipher about the origins of the three-headed duckling is that it was shipped from China and an email address included in the package could be traced back to a zoologist in the country who is, as you might have surmised, rather adept at taxidermy. However, when he wrote to them asking about his shipment, they were unable or unwilling to provide any answers. On the slip of paper with that contact information was also a strange set of care instructions for the item, specifically that the recipient should air it out for 48 hours and then "use a regular hair blow-dryer 'to fluffy' the duck's feathers."
As for who could have sent the duck to him and why, Braaten has two theories. The first is that perhaps a friend had the piece sent to him as a prank, but no one has come forward yet to take credit for the clever gag. The other possibility, he jokingly said, is that "it's an enemy who's trying to send a cursed object to me." Either way, the man had decided to 'adopt' the three-headed duckling and is currently soliciting suggestions from friends as to what to name the creature.