Our feathered friends haven't been this imperiled since the Beagle Boys hounded Huey, Dewey, and Louie for the Golden Goose. And this time, the villain is your own backyard: storm drains.Just this week, Officer Eileen Emiddio of a yet-unnamed locale saved a dozen storm drain-downed fuzzballs after being summoned to the scene by the quacking mother. (Curiously, only 11 saved ducklings are pictured.)
Three days earlier, Ogden, Utah firefighters, after extinguishing a burning van, responded to a frantic mother duck nearby and plucked her 11 ducklings from a storm drain. But their jobs weren't done! One just-saved duckling "tumbled down the hill into another storm drain." Unable to reach it, the firefighters "built a little ramp out of the storm drain and the baby duck ambled out on its own." Adorable heroics!
But even more incredible is the story of a Seattle banker, who, in May, two-handedly saved ducking after ducking from a ten-foot dive, collected the last three from a ledge, then led the reunited family down a parade route (no joke) to water:
(The ducks are cute, but I particularly enjoy the embrace at the end between our story's hero and the woman who has clearly fallen in love with him. Soon to be a Lifetime movie, no doubt.)
Not to be outdone, on the same day firefighters pulled four duckings from a storm drain in D.C.
That's an astonishing 39 ducklings pulled from storm drains (and one twice!) in the past two months. And those are just the ones that made the news. Too often, cute ducklings rescued by our public servicemen and women just don't make the news. Actually, that's not true. They always make the news.
Still, in a world that still cuts six-pack plastic rings, I think the least we can do is develop storm drains that don't swallow up baby ducks.
