State trooper saves ducklings trapped in storm drain

It’s no fun being a stuck duck. But a lucky stuck duck can count on a helping human hand if it winds up in trouble.

Last weekend that helping hand came from a caring Massachusetts police officer who ensured that eight little ducklings who had slipped into a storm drain made it back to mom.

State Trooper Jim Maloney first spotted the baby animals while patrolling the parking lot at Nahant Beach on Saturday morning. The defenceless youngsters had fallen into a storm drain and were trapped in the water beneath the drain’s heavy grate.

Mother duck, together with the only duckling to avoid falling in, were standing a short distance away, “because Momma would not leave her trapped babies,” the Massachusetts State Police said in a Facebook post.

Maloney called the state’s Department of Conservation and Recreation, which runs Nahant Beach, 12 miles northeast of Boston, and asked them to send someone with a crowbar.

Staff from Nahant’s Department of Public Works (DPW) and Lynn Animal Control also joined in to assist with the rescue.

A Nashant DPW employee prized open the grate, allowing the animal control officer to lift the ducklings out of the drain using a net.

Mother duck had by this time retreated to a grassy area nearby to wait. After the rescued duckings were safely placed in a cardboard box, Maloney put the box in his cruiser to keep them warm while they waited for mom “to come out of the brush to take her babies back.”

Around 40 minutes after Maloney first spotted the trapped animals, the mother and the single baby who hadn’t fallen in the drain emerged from the brush.

“The mother immediately went to them, and together she and her nine babies – the family full reunited – walked back into the grass,” state police said. “A small act amid the enormity of the ongoing health crisis, perhaps, but for one mother duck and her tiny babies, it made all the difference in the world.”

We couldn’t agree more.