Busted! Ducks arrested for loitering at gas station on the Fourth of July; officers take webbed footprints



NEW MILFORD, Pennsylvania -- The Fourth of July is a busy night for police, and officers in Pennsylvania arrested some unique suspects causing trouble on the holiday!

Four ducks were taken into Great Bend police custody Tuesday night, July 4th on charges of loitering outside a Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania gas station.

"It's just one Fourth of July no one will ever forget," Cindy Osiecki said.

Osiecki got a phone call from police she was definitely not expecting.

"I thought it was funny! I'm like 'are you serious?' There were like 'yeah we took them' because I guess people were trying to take my ducks, and everyone was feeding them. Even the cop fed them bread," Osiecki said.

The ducks were eventually returned to Osiecki and her family -- able to once again swim in the creek behind Osiecki's New Milford home along Montrose Street -- less than a mile from the Pump and Pantry gas station where they were arrested.

"It's not like they wander far from home. That was the first time that I ever saw they went up to the Pump and Pantry because normally they go to my neighbor's house," Osiecki explained.

Officers posted the pictures to the Great Bend Police Department Facebook page, and the post quickly got almost 300 shares.



"Our ducks are famous and they're cool and they're awesome," Osiecki's daughter Savannah said.

Workers at the Pump and Pantry in New Milford noticed the ducks around the back of the store around 7:00 p.m. Tuesday night, and that's when they called police. Neighbors knew who the ducks belonged to, though, and everything was quickly sorted out.

"I was just so thankful they found my ducks and they took them in to be safe," Osiecki said.

Osiecki said the Great Bend Police Department could not have handled the situation better. She said officers joked that they even took the ducks' fingerprints, or in this case, webbed footprints.