This duck doing 60mph in the middle lane of the motorway clearly had places to be.
Roland Bowler, 33, was gobsmacked when he clocked the bird flapping between lorries on the M23 near Gatwick Airport.
He was riding shotgun in his friend’s van when the creature cut across them before ducking in between two lorries on the inside lane.
After swerving into the middle lane, Roland says the female duck whizzed over an approaching bridge before resuming its place among the fast-moving traffic below.
The stunned passenger decided to whip out his phone to record the creature’s flight of fancy on August 19, just as it settled into a convoy position in front of a van.
In the video, Roland says: ‘Look at him go. What’s he doing? 60 miles per hour. Go on boy. He’s having it. You’ve got to respect him.’
The duck kept its eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead and generally had pretty good lane discipline, although it did undertake the black van in the video.
Luckily the bird flew eventually away from the motorway unharmed and veered towards the farmland near Gatwick airport.
Roland, from Strood, Kent, said it was ‘like something from Wacky Races’. He added: ‘I think it probably got fed up with the lockdown and thought, ‘bu**** this, I’m going on holiday.
‘It got bored and decided, “France sounds better”. That’s no doubt where it was going.
‘This duck was having a laugh, it wasn’t in trouble. You know when a bird is in trouble because it’s trying to pull away from the motorway. This one was having the time of its life.
‘It didn’t have a care in the world. Some people were saying that the duck was scared, but trust me, that duck wasn’t scared.
‘You’d notice if an animal was a bit worried. Worst case scenario, it would’ve ended up on the hard shoulder or something like that. But the duck was going for it.
‘We must have followed it for about five miles before I even got my phone out. It was there for ages.
‘I said, “let’s see how fast it’s actually going”. We pulled alongside of it and it was doing 60mph.’
Roland, who takes part in shoots in his spare time, says ducks usually fly in pods and believes this one may have got lost from its group.
After uploading the video online, fetching more than 22,000 likes and shares, he was messaged by a lorry driver of more than 40 years who said he’d ‘never ever in his life seen anything like that’.
Roland added: ‘It is nice because you do get some messages from people saying this is amazing. Some people take it a bit more literally.
‘Some people think you’re putting pressure on the duck, but the duck was in its element.’
‘Normally ducks don’t fly singly, usually it’s in a two or a pod of three. I think maybe it was a bit lost.
‘But once you get to Gatwick, there are a load of ponds and lakes so in the worst case scenario it could go to a place and find a mate. She definitely would’ve found a new home.’
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