Cut to Wednesday morning, three days later, when Haronga, a teacher at Mahora School, received a video in her work group chat of a live duck in the front bumper of a car that looked like her vehicle.
“I went, ‘what the blazers?’,” she said.
In the video, the duck appeared relatively happily tucked into the odd location, while a young student remarked, “I love nature”.
Not being great with birds at the best of times, Haronga called an ex-workmate who is a duck hunter.
“But it turned out that as a duck hunter, he doesn’t like live birds,” she laughed.
Fortunately, a school office worker rang the SPCA, which sent someone to collect the duck and take it to a vet.
The bird was checked by a vet and, remarkably, the lucky duck had no injuries.
The SPCA was able to release it back to the wild near where it hitched a ride with Haronga.
Haronga said she was still shocked that she never saw or heard the duck while walking around her car.
“The people I work with, they laughed at me because I hadn’t seen it,” she said.
“It just never reared its ugly head.”
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in Auckland, London, Berlin, and Napier.