A flock of ducks swam in the water at Dawes Lagoon in south Evanston Saturday afternoon. A few minutes later, they were displaced and hundreds of smaller yellow birds took their place.
The new arrivals were palm-sized and brightly colored, but somehow different. The rubber ducks bobbed up and down in the lagoon, and soon they started to swim toward a finish line as dozens of families cheered.
The fifth annual Duck Race and Pluck, sponsored by National City Bank’s Evanston branch and, fittingly, Aflac, raised at least $1,650 for the Evanston Environmental Association.
Children decorated paper ducks on popsicle sticks and waved them in support of their ducks during the race. Families could buy one rubber duck for $10 or three ducks for $25, and the birds made an honorary lap around the lake in a kayak before they were dumped in the water as part of “the Great Duck Launch.”
As the race began, organizers led the crowd in singing the Duck Serenade and Butts Up: “Butts up, butts up, that’s what a duck must do, to get a tasty marsh mud shake, a mixture of water and goo.”
A trumpeter played a charge and the Blue Danube Waltz throughout the race as Evanston Township High School students used paddles and oars to create a current. The ducks made steady progress around the pool but took about twenty minutes to reach the finish line. The first ten to reach the finish line as well as twelve random ducks plucked from the pack earned prizes for those who had purchased them.
Evanston resident Jill Chapman attended the race on Saturday but said it was not her first duck race. Chapman is originally from Hertfordshire, England, but lives in Evanston while her husband attends Seabury-Western Theological Seminary.
“It’s lovely,” she said. “We have these in England. They’re usually done by the Boy Scouts. It gets very competitive.”
Most of the children in attendance ran around the edge of the pond to keep pace with the flock and cheered loudly for their own ducks. Chapman’s son, John Daniel, clapped excitedly when he saw the racing birds.
“He’s just at an age where he can appreciate this sort of thing,” Chapman said.
Irene Gregory, secretary of the Evanston Environmental Association Board, said this year’s duck sales were “par for the course.” She came up with the idea for the duck race in 2000 and was the one who decided that “current engineers” would help the rubber toys would move around the lagoon.
“No one believed me!” she said.
Most years the race doesn’t take quite as long to complete, she said.
“We don’t usually have this stiff wind,” Gregory said.
Reach Elizabeth Thiers at [email protected].