New York, NY — Mandarin Patinkin, a duck best known for making New Yorkers happy, at least for the six months he resided in Manhattan, is missing and feared dead.
Patinkin, a Mandarin duck rarely seen in these parts, showed up in October 2018 and quickly made his home in a Central Park pond. It was at that time when David Barrett of the Manhattan Bird Alert Twitter account shared a video of the duck. We instantly fell in love and were the first to publish a report on the duck sighting. Soon, other publications took note, and helped propel the duck to a level of fame he was likely not comfortable with, you know, as a duck.
While he would take day trips to New Jersey and Brooklyn from time to time, he always returned to his pond in Central Park. And it's there where his cult following flocked to get a glimpse of him. "Hot Duck" T-shirts, hats, and sweatshirts were made, using the nickname given to the duck by The Cut. A dog even donned a Mandarin duck costume upon her visit to see Patinkin. It was a real scene.
Then, in March of 2019, the duck was gone.
It was expected he would depart during mating season around April, and if not, then definitely by June for molting season, a.k.a. ugly hot duck season. But it was also expected he'd be back by now. Alas, it's December, and we still have not seen the Mandarin Duck make his triumphant return to New York City. So here we all are, a bunch of phony Holden Caulfields, asking about the goddamn duck and what happened to him.
This afternoon I asked Barrett, the man who first introduced us to the duck, a pointed question: "He's not coming back, right?" To which Barrett replied, "It certainly is less likely now that most of the duck migration has taken place."
"Do you think he... died?" I asked.
"I am starting to consider the possibility that he suffered some sort of tragic fate back in March," Barrett told me. "It is troubling that he disappeared so suddenly, with no observations outside Central Park." (Note: I originally thought—stupidly and hopefully—that he was upstate taking in the foliage, but I later confirmed this was not him, and the duck in that photo belonged to a farm.)
"It's vexing: how does the world's most famous duck, one that looks distinctly different from any other native duck, just fly off and vanish?" Barrett asked rhetorically. "Maybe he was ducknapped, given his popularity?" I asked. "Yes," Barrett said, "that is part of the 'tragic event' scenario!" Stay tuned for our upcoming true crime podcast, Duck, Duck...Death?
"Every duck leaves, baby, that's a fact, but maybe every duck that leaves, someday comes back."
So what do we know, if anything? "He would not go out to the ocean," Barrett says. "He is a freshwater duck that prefers small ponds, like the one he visited in New Jersey, and like the Central Park Pond and Turtle Pond. Small ponds are the first to freeze over. So, if he is still out there somewhere, his choices will soon become severely limited." But again, if he were out there, someone would have likely reported a sighting by now.
For you hope-seekers, Barrett added it's possible Mandarin Patinkin will still return to Central Park—"he will remember that a section of it stayed unfrozen last year even as all other small water bodies (e.g., the Meer, Turtle Pond) iced over." Ducks remember locations well, which honestly makes it's all the more odd that this one has not returned to a location he once called home. But maybe he's a loner, Dottie, and just wanted time out of the limelight.
Want more of that sweet, sweet false hope? "The duck is presumed missing, not dead," my colleague Ben Yakas reminds me, warning, "Don't forget what happened in the 2009 movie Brothers when everyone assumed Toby Maguire was dead (he wasn't). Do not fall for false flag funerals. I shall not mourn for he who is still alive in our hearts."
