The Court came together to rescue 6 ducklings from the storm sewer. Evidently the momma duck took her flock a little to close to a grate and they all fell in. Yesterday morning I saw her looking in the grate, and when I came home a few of the neighbors had herd the ducklings peeping. They pried off the grate and attempted to grab the ducks, the ducks did not necessarily want picked up by some humans, so the following things were tried to get the ducks out of the sewer:

1. flush them out, by putting a hose in the upstream grate.
2. put a 2×4 in the hole as a ramp
2a. add staples to the ramp to act like a ladder
2b. put dents in the ramp by smashing a crow bar into the 2×4
3. place bread in a trash can and coax them into the trash can and them pick the trash can out of the hole.
4. blow compressed air into the upstream grate.

While all of this was going on, mamma duck was honking and trying to see what was going on.

Fairly quickly, three of the ducklings were caught by the trashcan method. They almost immediately tried to jump back into the hole with there compatriots; they were placed in a box for safekeeping.

Mamma duck spotted the three after we released them a few houses down, and after we were sufficiently away from her ducks, decided scold them and be on her way.

The other ducklings were getting a little more brave, now that they did not have trash cans and 2x4s being waived around there head and were peeping around the bottom of the inlet. Sue and the neighbor’s daughter caught the last three by hand. They then rushed the little ones to their momma and the family was all back together, as far as we could tell.

More pictures following the link…Link

Tags: ducks, storm_sewer, trashcan, updates/anouncements