These Bluffer’s Park neighbours built an adorable houseboat for ducks
Follow along for duck-sized architectural cuteness
Members of a floating home community in Bluffer’s Park have constructed the most adorable dwelling we’ve ever seen: a houseboat for ducks.
“In the depths of winter time, I off-handedly mentioned this dream of mine to my neighbour,” Kate Fincham, who runs the Instagram page My Little Houseboat, posted at the beginning of a very cute video diary.
Fincham and her neighbours, Les and Johnny, did research, solving architectural queries such as how many square feet a duck requires, drew up the plans, gathered building supplies and painted the exterior.
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“Every day we’d chip away at a portion of the duck house, fitting the plexiglass windows, ordering the styrofoam for the base, making the the tiny pink window box to match my houseboat, cutting the trim for the windows, shaping the metal roof, spray painting the little chimney… there were so many small details we wanted to get right,” Fincham’s post explained.
When they finally set the duck houseboat in the water, the ducks waddled up its ramp to their cozy new abode.
Based on an Instagram update, the ducks have now properly moved in. “I am overjoyed to say that the duck family, with mama and her seven fluffy little ducklings, have claimed the floating duck houseboat as their own!” Fincham said. “They’ve been using it several times a day, foraging around the marina before returning for preening and napping in a fuzzy pile on the deck.”
Residing rent-free in a custom lakefront pied-à-terre—these ducks are living the dream.
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
