Dee Dee Ramone’s grave has gained some very peculiar visitors with ducks of punk paying their respects to the late bassist. Thanks to a clever Los Angeles couple, a raft of moshing mallards visit the site in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on a daily basis.
Originally inheriting five ducks, Empire Records actor, Coyote Shivers, and his partner Pleasant Gehman needed to find them a new home. No longer able to keep them on their property, the couple decided the next best place would be a cemetery. Choosing to go with the grave of the late bassist, Coyote and Pleasant had the ‘quacky’ idea of turning a popular track into a dinner bell. Dubbed Duckskrieg Bop, the bell rings out a recording of Blitzkrieg Bop mixed with quacks while hailing in the flock.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Coyote said everything “was closed, even the beaches and parks, the streets were full of riots and boarded up windows, and so we would go to the cemetery to get away from the negativity, and feel some air and beauty and care for some of the urban wildlife that live there: ducks, geese, feral cats, squirrels, doves, swans, etc.
He continued, “We started calling them the Ramones Ducks because they’re all black and they stick together and stood out like a gang, and they’d run up to Dee Dee every day.”
“By last spring, we started noticing the new mother ducks were bringing their days-old ducklings and teaching them, ‘When you hear this song, march up the hill to here,’ and we realized it was becoming generational to them. It just keeps growing.”
Documenting the experience, Coyote and Pleasant have set up an Instagram account (@ramonesducks) for the ducks of punk, and their feathery friends. As for the original five ducks, four of them are named Dee Dee, Joey, Johnny, and Tommy, after the original four Ramones. While the fifth duck is named Sheena after the band’s classic 1977 hit, Sheena Is a Punk Rocker.
Meanwhile, Dee Dee’s widow, Barbara Zampini, is fully on board with the ducks, even designing a T-shirt with proceeds going toward feeding the ducks (and other animals that also stop by Dee Dee’s tombstone). As for the mess that gets left behind, the couple and their friends make sure to clean it regularly, even laying down an Astroturf mat for protection.
