Man Leaves to Get His Wife Lunch, Then Comes Back with a Duckling (Exclusive)

• Abby’s best friend Juliann posted a TikTok of Abby’s husband coming home from a lunch run, only to have a live baby duck instead
• The video shows him explaining how he couldn’t leave the lone ducking behind, sparking a viral moment
• The couple now has three ducklings, named after Home Alone characters, among a handful of other pets

When Juliann innocently posted a TikTok about her best friend’s husband’s latest errand, she thought she was just letting friends in on a joke. Instead, her post became a viral sensation. 

The video shows Abby’s husband, David Biondi, returning from what was supposed to be a simple lunch run. Instead of just food, he came home with a surprise: a lonely baby duck. The video’s on-screen text reads,”POV: You send your husband out for lunch,” and what follows is a heartwarming glimpse into the Biondi household. 

“I was in the feed store. We have chickens and ducks outside, and I was just going to get them some food,” David recalls to PEOPLE. “I was purposely avoiding going near the chicks and ducks, because I know when I start looking, I’m going to come home with them.”

Fate — and one particularly pitiful duckling — had other plans. “There was a couple standing near it, and the guy said, ‘I can’t believe there’s just one duck left.’ At that point, I basically walked over and said, ‘All right, that’s one duck. It can’t be alone.’ ”

Abby, who secretly filmed the now-viral clip of the retelling, wasn’t exactly shocked. “That’s just David’s nature,” she says. “He has a very warm and empathetic nature and a great sense of humor, as you can tell. That’s one thing I love about him and drew me to him.”

The couple, who live on a bit of land with an already bustling menagerie of animals, had thought about adding more ducks eventually — but this wasn’t exactly the plan.

“This wasn’t the year I planned to add more animals,” David says. “But once I saw that little guy alone, plans changed.”

Abby says the video was more of an inside joke than a social experiment. “The whole video itself really was me proving a point to my friends about like, this is how this keeps happening,” she says, laughing. “But it was meant to be like a funny thing … I never anticipated it reaching 5 million people.”

The duckling, whom they named Kevin (after Kevin McCallister from Home Alone, naturally), quickly settled in. He’s currently living indoors, right next to Abby’s desk while she works. “We thought he was too small to go outside,” David shares. “We need to keep him until he gets a little bit bigger and gets some proper feathers so he can keep warm.”

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Making sure Kevin didn’t stay lonely was a mission all its own. “Between us, we probably called 10 places like all within an hour-and-a-half to see where there were any ducks,” David says. “Nobody had any ducks left — Kevin was like the last duck.”

So David got creative. “I went out Monday morning and I got six chicks, because I thought maybe he would be happy if we put him in with some chicks,” he says. “He did not like that. So the chicks did not like Kevin, and Kevin did not like the chicks. So now we have chicks in the other room growing up.”

To round out the Home Alone theme, Abby and David later bought two more ducklings to keep Kevin company — naming them after Kevin McCallister’s siblings: Linnie and Buzz. The Biondis’ home is full of life — literally. Alongside the ducks and chicks are chickens, goats, a hedgehog, a cat, a dog and plenty of laughter.

Despite the chaos, David wouldn’t have it any other way. “If you do it right, they’re worth it,” he says. “They’re very fair animals.”