Ruthie the Duck Girl: The French Quarter's Finest

The French Quarter's Roller-Skating Duck Lady

Every great city needs its characters — the people who refuse to live by anyone else's rules, who turn the sidewalk into a stage and make you question what normal even means. New Orleans has produced more than its share. But none of them were quite like Ruthie the Duck Girl.

Ruth Grace Moulon was born in New Orleans in 1934 and spent her life in the French Quarter, where she became one of the most recognizable figures in a neighborhood full of recognizable figures. Her routine was simple and completely insane: she roller-skated between bars in the Quarter wearing eccentric furs, drinking Budweiser, smoking Kool cigarettes, and accompanied by her pet ducks. Just waddling along behind her, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Every Mardi Gras, Ruthie would attend the parades in a wedding dress, claiming she was waiting to marry a man named Gary Moody from the Moody Barn, whom she'd met during his Navy service. Whether Gary Moody was real, or whether the wedding dress was performance art, or whether Ruthie even saw a distinction between the two — nobody was entirely sure.

A photographer who documented her life summed it up perfectly: she wasn't out of touch with reality. She just wasn't interested in it.

Ruthie became a tourist attraction in her own right — visitors to the Quarter would seek her out the way they'd seek out a jazz club or a beignet. She was proof of something New Orleanians already knew: the city doesn't just tolerate eccentricity, it celebrates it. Other cities have characters. New Orleans has institutions.

She died in 2008 at seventy-four, and the Quarter felt a little less magical for it. Ruthie the Duck Girl didn't contribute to architecture or music or politics or cuisine. She contributed something harder to define and just as essential: the idea that in New Orleans, you can be exactly who you are, no matter how weird that is, and the city will love you for it.