Fern helps light up Harrison Township

HARRISON TOWNSHIP — The holiday season has arrived, and Harrison Township is lit up with the help of “Chewy Claus” and one special duck.

At the Harrison Township tree lighting on Dec. 4, residents and public officials celebrated the holidays and thanked Fern the duck for her wish to light up the town, submitted to the online retailer’s Chewy Claus outreach.

Averyn Hunter won the township’s “Flip the Switch” contest by completing five random acts of kindness. Her name was added to a drawing after she completed the tasks.

Fern is a Pekin duck, and she was rescued by her owner Aspen DeMonaco when she found her abandoned.

“At the time, I had been doing a lot of research on dumped waterfowl, but I never expected to find my own,” DeMonaco said.

She said she found Fern standing by a building at a park with no food or water.

“She almost looked like she was waiting for a bus, and it was really sad because she was waiting for whoever dropped her off to pick her back up,” DeMonaco said.

At the time, Fern was around four weeks old and since then she’s become really fond of DeMonaco and people in general. DeMonaco said it took a week for Fern to warm up to her and her surroundings. Fern lives inside DeMonaco’s house with other pets.

During Fern’s very first Christmas, DeMonaco said she took her to see Christmas lights in Harrison Township and that she was excited seeing the dancing colors. DeMonaco’s cousin had told her to write to Chewy Claus.

“I had submitted a few letters from the range of animals that I had,” DeMonaco said. “She hadn’t won anything specifically from Chewy Claus when she initially had submitted but a few months later, her wish was granted to come true for this year.”

Fern’s wish was to light up her town for the holidays.

DeMonaco said it was special for them to be picked, and it couldn’t have come at a better time of year. She said her experience with Chewy has been good and that a lot of the employees adore Fern and love her from all over the country.

“I even say that if Fern and I go on a road trip, I mean, they’re going to be one of our first stops,” DeMonaco said. “They just made this experience an unbelievably — everything you could have ever imagined.”

Lisa-Marie Curti, brand activations lead at Chewy, said the Chewy Claus contest is the pet version of Santa and it has been going on for around four years.

“We’ve created a way for pets to write in for their version of Santa,” Curti said.

“Essentially, we fulfill tens of thousands of wishes every year.”

Curti said with every wish submitted to Chewy Claus, they donate five meals to pets in need. If submitted through their app, the company donates an additional five meals and if a pet owner defers their wish to a pet in need, they donate five more meals.

Over the years, they’ve had over a million pets submit their wishes to Chewy Claus. This year, they’ve fulfilled thousands of wishes, but they granted a couple other big wishes for pet owners across the country. Fern’s was one of them.

One pet’s owner has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as ALS, in her mid 30s. The pet’s wish was to walk with his mom again because she is wheelchair bound.

“We granted the wish and we custom created a leash that attaches to her wheelchair so that she can independently take her dog for a walk,” Curti said.

Jessica Savage, Harrison Township Parks and Recreation director, said Chewy contacted her after they spoke with DeMonaco.

“They called me and asked me to help coordinate how it happens and when it happens,” Savage said.

Lights started going up on Monday of that week and she said everything is very similar to what happened the previous year. This is the first time having a food truck and heated tent.

However, she did say there are more lights this year because of Chewy.

“Now our biggest problem is figuring out how to live up to this year next year,” Savage said.

She said Chewy sponsored around $70,000 worth of lights.

DeMonaco has owned birds before including parrots and she’s been rescuing animals all her life. She started studying waterfowl in 2019.

“I’m very well-versed on animals but I hadn’t really taken on the role of waterfowl up until my college years,” DeMonaco said.

DeMonaco works at a public high school. Fern makes appearances at their events including homecoming, football games and more. She said the kids love when Fern attends events.

“It just makes their day, just lets them be kids again,” DeMonaco said.

DeMonaco advised people to not feed waterfowl bread and instead use things such as dried oatmeal, frozen peas, watermelon or cracked corn. She also suggested that people should do their research before owning a waterfowl or a bird.

To find out how to submit a letter for Chewy Claus, go to chewy.com.