Wimberley quacks up, moving online this year

Spring and its change to higher temperatures bring about huge changes to everything, from birds to bees, plants to people and ducks to the Blanco. Not only the real ducks at the 1492 bridge, but the floatable kind to Water’s Point. Oh you remember, it was only a few years ago.

On Saturday May 15, sponsored by Wimberley EMS, the ducks will be active again, but only online, delayed once again by the pandemic. Hopefully next year, as in the past, the annual outing on the river will bring out a lot of the water and EMS lovers in the com munity to the riverbank. All there to watch perhaps the opposite of the Kentucky Derby’s “fastest two minutes in sport,” a meandering of paddling ducks.

All of this is a fundraiser for the Wimberley EMS, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that has been doing this for twenty one times, missing last year. But the flock is returning again only this year it will be online.

“This year instead of doing a duck race, we’re going to do a duck raffle. We’re doing it all online this time. You can purchase your tickets at WimberleyEMS.com, and it is still five bucks a duck and still the same prizes. First place is $2,000. Second place, $1,000 third places $500, fourth place $250. And we still have the Lame Duck that brings up the back, they’re still $250. But instead of putting ducks in the water, we’re just going to draw tickets,” said Ken Strange, the EMS Director.

Tickets with numbers and names will be on paper, so no computer mishaps and no danger of computer hacking. “I have paper tickets here and I’m going to spin them and draw them. It just feels better to me to do that,” he continued. “We will be live streaming on our Facebook page.” The Duck Race raffle will be drawn at the end of the EMS Open House, which just happens to be on the same day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

“From 10 to 4 p.m., we want you to come by at the open house. We’ll take you on a tour through the buildings, and we will have a little finger food here. We want you to come and see the building and go through our building and meet our board members,” Strange said.

The building is stocked with the latest equipment and is eye-opening to say the least when it comes to meeting future needs in the community, with classrooms, bedrooms for 24 hour on-call staff medics and much more. “And it is all paid for,” said Strange. All Wimberley EMS ambulances are fully stocked with the latest state of the art equipment and supplies

Formed in 1976, the Wimberley EMS now has a staff of three ambulances 24 hours a day, 365 days a year with 14 full-time paramedics.

They are an independent, standalone EMS service dispatched by the Hays County Sheriff’s Department. Their paramedics cover more than 150 square miles of western Hays County including Wimberley, Woodcreek and portions of Driftwood and rural San Marcos with an estimated population of 16,000.

The Open House will be held at the Wimberley EMS offices at 220 Twilight Trail, Wimberley, TX 78676, near the WISD bus barn. Phone is 512-847-2526.

The Duck Race is the most fun and one of the best ways to support the local EMS. To buy a duck go to their website at wimberleyems.com.