Love them or hate them, Muscovy ducks are part of many neighborhoods across the Tampa Bay area.
A post on the social networking service, Next Door, got our attention. Many of you were noticing some large ducks not doing very well near Meadowlawn and Fossil parks in St. Petersburg.
You said they looked dazed, shaky and unable to stand or walk. Some of them even died.
So, we made some calls to the city and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to see what was happening. Biologists collected a couple of the ducks for necropsies.
They tell us the ducks have a virus called enteritis, which is essentially the "duck plague." The virus is highly contagious, and geese and swans can get it too.
It doesn't infect mammals, though, so both you and your dog are safe.
Here's the website where you can report suspicious bird deaths.
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