AWW - Ducklings in trouble, ma calls police

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Ducklings in Trouble, Mother Calls the Police

July 13, 2001 02:04 PM ET VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - When a family of ducklings fell down a Vancouver sewer grate their mother did what any parent would do. She got help from a passing police officer.

Vancouver police officer Ray Peterson admitted he was not sure what to make of the duck that grabbed him by the pant leg while he was on foot patrol on Wednesday evening in a neighborhood near the city's downtown.

"I though it was a bit goofy, so I shoved it away," Peterson told the Vancouver Sun newspaper.

The mother duck persisted, grabbing Peterson's leg again when he tried to leave, and then waddling to a nearby sewer grate where she sat down and waited for him to follow and investigate.

"I went up to where the duck was lying and saw eight little babies in the water below," he said.

Police said they removed the heavy metal grate with the help of a tow truck and used a vegetable strainer to lift the ducklings to safety.

Mother and offspring then departed for a nearby pond.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

Answers

Reminds me of those goofy Aflack (?) Insurance commercials.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

Pity this didn't make world news. stuff like this is what is missing from news shows today.

Unless of course the cop then wrung the neck of the mother and took her home to eat...

-- Anonymous, July 14, 2001


Barefoot! Shame on you!

Git, I wanna another room!

-- Anonymous, July 14, 2001


Git, doing Swiss desk clerk impersonation, "You would lahk a hrrroom, m'sieu?"

-- Anonymous, July 14, 2001

One of the climaxes of my graduate career in wildlife biology was skipping out on an ornithology class so I could watch a brood of wood ducks leaving their nest. (The prof DID say we were supposed to observe this if the occasion ever arose...)

The artifical nest box, put there for kestrels, I believe, was 10 to 12 feet up in a neighbor's tree. That neighbor was also a wildlife management grad student, although in a slightly different department.

The waterfowl professor had adopted the nest box and was testing a theory of his, relating to when, exactly, in the egg laying process the mother duck would start to incubate. IOW, one egg a day, but mom didn't necessarily kick up the heat at the beginning. The difference is that if incubation starts early, the later eggs would be runts.

So, all this was hardwired into the neighbor's kitchen. The blessed event (escape from the box) happened the same morning we were inside the kitchen watching, on an alternate channel, Mt. St. Helene erupt.

We had strung a mesh net around the bottom of the tree. The problem was that the box was a LONG ways from any water sources, and there was no way mom could safely negotiate her way around traffic.

We did eventually catch all the young'uns and I guess someone nabbed mom as well. They couldn't fly yet, just jumped out of the box and bounced on the ground for a while. Grabbing them was an experience, just a little fluff ball with no substance at all.

I decided from that experience that "field" work was just fine if I could do it from the safe confines of a heated abode.

-- Anonymous, July 16, 2001



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