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The other day, I was walking home from the hardware store and I spotted a duck walking around in the gutter with three little ducks walking behind her. It seemed like they were trying to cross the road, so I busted out my camera and tried to get a photo.
They were all making really cute "meep" and "peep" sounds.
The mother duck hopped up a tallish curb out of the gutter, and her baby ducklings tried to follow her. They could hop really high, (4 inches), but they couldn't quite get over the top. Actually, they bumped down to a spot with a little defect in the concrete where they could get a little webbed foothold.
Two ducklings made it up, but the mother was losing patience with the third (I don't think she could see his struggle from where she was standing).
Then! Tragedy struck!
The mother hopped down the curb, and rejoined the third duckling. It seemed like she was coming down to see if he was OK. Of course, her other two babies hopped down too, so now everyone was back in the gutter.
The mother walked down the gutter to a place where the curb wasn't so tall, but unfortunately, she passed over a storm grating! I watched fascinated and horrified to see her babies drop helplessly down the steel grating as they walked over it. Foop! Foop! Zoop. They were gone, down the drain.
For a minute I was thinking that these ducks might have come UP through the storm drain, (there aren't any nearby lakes), but there was no hole big enough for the mother duck to come out of this particular grating.
Ok, so I took action. There happened to be two dudes crossing the street at that time, and I called them over to help me remove the grating. They were drinking big iced coffees. We lifted the grating off and set it aside. Down the big, rectangular hole, about three feet down, was a solid pad of leaves, with eight little ducklings flopping around on it.
The momma duck must have lost the first five down the hole before I noticed her!
One of the dudes sat on the edge of the hole and asked for something to grab them with. He didn't want to touch them on account of the old "don't touch baby chicks or their mother won't know their smell anymore" thing. We salvaged a shallow cardboard box from a recycling can and he started lifting the chicks up out of the gutter in the box one at a time.
Momma duck was kind of freaking out, running in circles, which worked out, because the babies could spot her and get in line behind her. The other dude was doing his best to wave the new ducks towards the momma.
1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8 the ducklings came out of the hole and fell into line behind momma. There were so many, it was nuts!
The momma duck started off towards a side yard with plenty of vegetation.
I snapped this blurry photo.
The fellows and I stared down the storm drain for a few minutes, checking to see if there were any more ducklings. Finally we were satisfied with our work and covered up the storm grating.
The End.