Many of the ducks in Liberty Park look drunk.
"They're kind of staggering," city parks director Val Pope said.
But the problem here is not beer, it's botulism. An outbreak has felled about 100 ducks over the past two months — five times as many fowl as died last year, according to Tracy Aviary director Nigella Hillgarth.
The poisonous bacterium clostridium is in mud all over the Salt Lake Valley. With a relatively dry spring and this summer's intense heat coming sooner than usual, that mud has been left exposed. So the ducks, rooting through the soil for food, are ingesting the toxin and then flying into Liberty Park, Pope said.
Botulism doesn't usually endanger birds until late August and September. Last year, about 20 ducks died from botulism, according to Hillgarth.
When botulism attacks a bird's nervous system, paralysis sets in. No more swimming, no more flying. "It's very sad," she said.
A duck's chance for survival depends on how much poison is ingested, Hillgarth added, and some birds can be nursed back to health. Tracy Aviary tube-feeds a liquid nutrition supplement to the sick ducks and gives them saline injections, but too many are too far gone.
Avian botulism can't be transmitted to humans, unless "a human did something ridiculous like eat a dead duck," Hillgarth said.
But it can spread to other ponds, as ducks migrate from one body of water to another. A poisoned duck that's not yet paralyzed can fly to another pond, and hours later botulism renders it unable to move and it dies there. Insects cluster around the duck carcasses, attracting other ducks and transmitting the botulism to more fowl.
Hillgarth visited a private pond at a house in Murray where she saw two ducks that appeared to have symptoms of botulism.
Besides cleaning up the victims, not much can be done about the botulism outbreak, according to Pope. Parks division workers are double-bagging the bodies and taking them to the landfill.
"It's kind of sad for the employees down there," Pope said. "When they see these ducks, they may have some emotional issues."
Hillgarth offers some hope, however. Botulism stops spreading when the heat lets up; cooler air kills the clostridium bacteria. And if soil loaded with the bacteria erodes, the toxin can be wiped out.
"We just need a few good thunderstorms and lots of rain to wash it away," Hillgarth said.
E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com, durbani@desnews.com