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A MOMENTARY DISTRACTION FROM METEOROLOGY:

Ruthie the Duck Girl dies of cancer at 74

Ruthie the Duck Girl, a French Quarter eccentric who zoomed from bar to bar on roller skates, often wearing a ratty fur coat and long skirt and trailed by a duck or two, died Sept. 6 at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge. She was 74.

Ruthie, whose real name was Ruth Grace Moulon, had been suffering from cancer of the mouth and lungs when the residents of her Uptown New Orleans nursing home were evacuated to Baton Rouge as Hurricane Gustav approached, said Carol Cunningham, a close friend who watched over her for nearly 40 years.

“I’ve always looked at Ruthie like a little bird with a broken wing, ” Cunningham said. “She was always so dear to me.”

Miss Moulon, a lifelong New Orleanian, became a French Quarter fixture, achieving legendary status in a city that treasures people who live outside the mainstream. Along the way, she acquired a coterie of people like Cunningham who found places for her to live, paid her bills and made sure she got home at night….

• Full obituary via the Times-Picayune

• Ruthie’s life story at EccentricNewOrleans.com