As always, Summer VIIIs brought scenes of fierce competition and ruthless determination to the Isis. However, the greatest victim on Friday was not the pride of the losers, but a female mallard that was tragically killed on the river.
Hertford’s M2 boat, racing just past Donnington Bridge were startled to see the body of a duck, floating upside down near their stern between the boat and the bank. Although the exact circumstances of her death are, as yet, undetermined, it has been assumed that either a collision with the boat itself, or with one of the blades, brought about her untimely demise.
One of the rowers in the fateful boat, Gregory Lippiatt, denied responsibility, claiming, “To be fair, we don’t even know for sure if she was dead. I mean, she could have just been sleeping in an awkward position, or perhaps she was testing how long she could hold her breath.
“The fact that we were in the vicinity, thrashing about madly, blades going in all directions… well, there’s no way to know for sure that the two things aren’t a coincidence.”
His team-mate, Geoff Nelson, was more apologetic about the incident, saying, “Hertford M2 had no intention of killing any wildlife during our races. We would like acknowledge that this was a freak accident on the river. We apologize to Mother Nature for our transgression.”
Ex-rower Lucy Marriott, was horrified to learn of the incident, commented, “Ducks’ lives are precious! They deserve more rights than rowers, it’s their river after all.”
Despite such recriminations from duck-lovers across Oxford, one team member, Seaver Milnor, though not on the calamitous boat, defended his team-mates, “Though I don’t study Law, at least in my country ‘murder’ would require the intent to do bodily harm. This I suppose is a case of hit-and-run resulting in involuntary manslaughter, er, duckslaughter.”
One rower from Hertford stated, “M2 are rubbish, the only thing they could bump was a duck. They hit the duck as they crashed into the bank trying to escape a bump.”
Out of respect for their victim, the team took a moment of silence on Saturday when passing the spot where the duck breathed her last..”
An RSPCA volunteer confirmed to Cherwell that ducks do not have right-of-way on the river She did add however, that “Ducks are usually clever enough to get out of the way” and that in the dog-eat-dog (or indeed boat-kill-duck) world that we live in, “wildlife has to take its chances.”
