Every day for the past decade, a groundskeeper named Joe has performed a type of call of the wild at the Hotel Grand Pacific in Victoria. Some may call it quackery but as strange as it sounds, Joe is known as a kind of duck whisperer.
With a whistle Joe literally gets his ducks, about 100 of them, in a row.
“They know I’m coming when they hear the wheels on my garbage can, which I wheel around all the time… or just me, just my voice.”
This is all part of Joe Menard’s daily routine at the hotel, where for the past 12 years, he’s been putting his ‘crew’ to work.
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Works consists of Menard calling them out from the pond and taking them around Confederation Park to Quebec Street to get the grubs out of the lawn. The journey, he says, takes some patience because the ducks, of which there are up to 100, come out of the water single file along a trail they’ve made.
But the help makes it all worthwhile. He brings them back to the lawn two to three times a day and as they work their way through the lawn eating grubs, they’re also aerating and fertilizing the ground.
His work crew never fails in generating some attention by passersby.
“It’s a great conversation piece and I’m sure we’ve picked up business because of it, people want to stay at the duck hotel,” says hotel GM Reid James.
Once their work is done, it’s back through the park, into the trail and home to the pond.
But Menard won’t be at the hotel much longer, he’s planning to retire next year.
For now, it’s not known if the ducks will follow.
“It’s just great being part of the family,” Menard says. “It makes it so worthwhile to go to work every day.”
~ with files from Kylie Stanton
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