Crying Fowl : Pt. Fermin Gardener Files Grievance After Park Official Issues Admonition for Bringing Pet Ducks to Workplace

As far as the Department of Recreation and Parks is concerned, no day at Pt. Fermin Park is a good day for a duck. In fact, a parks department official has issued an edict declaring the park off-limits to ducks--specifically two ducks named Wally and Daisy Mae.

The ducks reportedly are taking it hard.

Wally and Daisy Mae belong to Cathy Cover, 34, a parks department gardener and caretaker who works at Pt. Fermin Park. Every day for five years, Cover has brought Wally--and for the past year-and-a-half, Daisy Mae--with her when she comes to work at the city of Los Angeles park.

While Cover is working on the immaculately groomed flower beds around the Pt. Fermin Lighthouse, the ducks waddle, quack and do whatever else ducks do. The ducks even help Cover in her work by gobbling up the snails and slugs that are the sworn enemies of every gardener.

As even parks department officials admit, no one has ever complained about the ducks. On the contrary, Cover and others say that over the years they’ve become local characters, park mascots, part of the unique charm of this well-maintained park that overlooks the ocean from atop high cliffs. Feature stories about Wally and Daisy Mae have appeared in newspapers and on television.

“Everybody loves these ducks,” Cover said last week. “Old people, young people, everybody. They both waddle around with me and make people smile. I’ve had grown men walk by and stop to quack at my ducks. They’re part of what makes this park so special.

“And they help me a lot. I don’t like to use snail bait, and I don’t have to, because Wally and Daisy Mae eat the snails and slugs. When I first drive up in the morning they jump out of the car and run to the grass, because in the lawn there are these teeny slugs that we can’t even see. And they gobble them up!”

But last month, a Department of Recreation and Parks supervisor issued a directive prohibiting parks department employees from bringing pets to work, including ducks. Parks officials say it was prompted by too many employees at city parks bringing their dogs and other pets to work with them, which was causing control and liability problems.

“We had dogs, cats, rabbits, chickens--the problem just kept escalating,” said Jose Vara, a senior park maintenance supervisor who issued the directive. He noted that the directive was a restatement of a longstanding--but not always enforced--parks department regulation.

Cover said she can understand how having employees’ dogs in a park might cause problems. But, as she pointed out, “There’s a big difference between dogs and ducks.”

Two weeks ago, Cover was cited for failing to obey the directive when a supervisor found Wally and Daisy Mae in Cover’s car at the park. Cover has now filed a grievance with the city employees’ union to get the written admonition removed from her record and, she hopes, to get an exemption from the no-pets rule for Wally and Daisy Mae.

Meanwhile, Cover said, the whole thing has put her ducks through heart-rending emotional turmoil.

“It’s hard for me to leave them at home,” Cover said. “When I close the door I can hear them crying, ‘Mom! Mom! Mom!’ It sounds like that to me anyway. How can you make a duck understand? I think (parks department officials) are punishing the ducks. It’s causing them a lot of stress.”

Cover said she suspects that the no-ducks campaign might stem from parks department officials’ frustration over the controversy involving Cover’s immediate supervisor, Julian Jimenez, who for the last 10 years has lived in the Pt. Fermin Lighthouse. Parks department officials last spring ordered Jimenez to move out of the lighthouse, prompting angry letters and petitions from a number of area residents. City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores also got involved in the controversy, winning Jimenez a 60-day reprieve from the eviction order.

The two issues--the ducks and Jimenez--have since become linked among some members of the public. At a rally held in support of Jimenez in June, several people held signs protesting both the eviction of Jimenez and the banishment of Wally and Daisy Mae.

“I think what they (parks officials) are doing is a kind of harassment,” Cover said, adding that she too might try to get a petition going to allow Wally and Daisy Mae to come to the park.

Vara, however, denied that the no-pets rule was directed at any one employee, or at ducks in general.

“What I have to do for one employee, I have to do for all employees,” Vara said. As for any hope that Wally and Daisy Mae will be given an exemption, Vara said, “Unless my supervisor says different, it (the no-pets directive) is firm.”