It left a dad ostracised from his children, when the mother shacked up with another mother in the village.
While it sounds a little like another one of those groan-inducing love triangle storylines from Shortland Street, this soap opera gets even better — the mother and father are paradise shelducks, and the "other mother" is a goose.
In the latest episode of the Birds of Our Lives, mother duck has shunned mother goose, and is trying to rekindle her relationship with father duck.
Portobello resident Jo Taylor said she had been watching the drama play out in the Otago Harbour community for several months.
"There was a paradise duck family — mum, dad and the two ducklings. And then I noticed that there was a goose hanging around.
"And in the next few days, the goose decided that it wanted to be with the mother duck and get rid of the father duck.
"She just slowly pushed the father duck out, being really aggressive and fighting with him."
Eventually, the goose took over the mother duck and the two ducklings, and the father duck was keeping his distance for fear of more attacks, she said.
"When daddy duck comes near, the mother duck doesn’t want to know him and the goose just shuts him out of the way.
"It’s sad because ducks mate for life. They’re very territorial and it’s really unusual to see this happen."
At the time, Ms Taylor said it was a "new-age relationship", and she could not see the duck family ever reuniting.
But now that the ducklings had flown off to make their own lives, mother duck was having second thoughts.
"It looks like the love affair is over.
"I think she just saw this absolutely hen-pecked husband and thought, ‘I felt sorry for him, I need to go and rescue him.’
"As with most affairs, it doesn’t end up well. And in this case, Ms Goose is the loser.
"Mr and Mrs Duck are now back to their relationship, sorting out their differences, and Ms Goose is alone.
"Poor Ms Goose just sits there all alone, looking out to sea.
"If she could use the internet, I think she'd probably be sitting there swiping left or right."
Ms Taylor said it was an inevitable ending.
