Lindsey Bever at WP:
Dylan Dyke’s best friends are ducks.
There Dylan is playing cards with “Bill.” There he is swimming with “Nibbles.” In another photo online, the 12-year-old with autism is seen talking to his two animals outside in Georgetown Township, Mich.
Earlier this year, Dylan even drew a picture of a duck and wrote an acrostic, defining his feathery friends as “Determined,” “Undefeatable,” “Caring” and “Kind."
"These ducks are his everything,” his mother, Jen Dyke, told NBC affiliate WOOD. “They’re his whole life.”
That’s why Dylan’s parents said it was so upsetting earlier this summer when neighbors began to complain about the animals, which Mark and Jen Dyke said provide emotional support for their son. It prompted officials in the township, near Grand Rapids, to order them to remove the ducks, saying they violated an ordinance against keeping farm animals in the neighborhood, according to the station.
But after an emotional fight, Dylan’s parents announced that members of the Georgetown Township Zoning Board of Appeals said Dylan could keep his friends.
