Duckling Rescue

How the kids of the neighborhood saved Mother's Day 2023

Half a family of ducklings. About the other half, read on. . . . Photo by Josie E.

What do you get when you combine quiet reading and motherhood?

Interruption, of course!

When the following short adventure began last year, I was in an armchair with a book.

This week marks two firsts for the Quiet Reading newsletter: my first time missing a scheduled post by more than a day and now my first time re-posting an essay from the archive. I wrote this essay in the aforementioned armchair on Mother’s Day 2023, and it gives me a chuckle to reread it. Whether you are new here or have followed this publication since the original “Duckling Rescue,” please know how much I appreciate your company!

Tomorrow I’ll send you the successor to the last post on two historic publishing innovators.

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From the Archives: Duckling Rescue

My youngest child does not usually charge into the house calling “Mom!!” and searching rooms for me, the way she did after school on Friday.

“Mom, you have to come!” she commanded from the doorway to my bedroom. “Right now!”

“Hi,” I said, closing my book. Pleasantries were out of the question. She was marching back the way she had come and briefing me at the same time.

“Some baby ducks fell in the —”

I heard her tone but not her words as I slipped into a pair of sandals and followed her out the front door, which stood open, the way she had left it.

The elementary school day had just ended. At this hour, a stream of children and families usually flowed past in the homeward direction. Today, a small knot of pedestrians had formed in front of our house. The oldest pair of siblings in the crowd, age twelve and ten, perched at the edge of the storm drain at my curb, their faces grave as if plotting strategy. The heavy metal grate lay beside the open hole.

From under the street came the loud “cheeeep — cheeeep — cheeeep!” of one or more frightened juvenile birds - ducklings, according to my daughter.

In the neighbor’s yard, behind the tall grass, a mother duck and a handful of downy babies hesitated, facing the sound of the missing young.

I followed J— to the open drain and looked down. Runoff from recent rain puddled below the outlet of a horizontal pipe. I expected to see ducklings paddling in the sludge, but the black water returned my gaze with perverse serenity. Pitiful and forlorn cries continued to rise from below.

“Where are they?” I asked, aware that I must be missing something obvious.

“In the pipe,” one of the kids answered.

I adjusted the angle of my gaze and saw them, three or more mud-colored babies cowering in the aqua pipe. My daughter’s eyes appealed to me: Fix this.

Another adult approached from up the street and sized up the situation. “Does anyone have a lacrosse stick?” he murmured calmly.

I offered to see what I could find for tools. My daughter and another girl took noisy turns jumping on the sewer lid across the street to discourage the ducklings from fleeing in that direction and out of reach. I admired their cleverness as I passed through the side gate in search of supplies.

Ducklings in the drainpipe. Photo by Josie E.

Lacrosse Dad and I returned at the same time, he with a saucepan and a long-handled kitchen spoon, I with a shovel and an old straw hat. We had the same idea about scooping the refugees into a container and airlifting them to their waiting mother. But the kids had us by several steps.

A shout went up from the committee around the drain-hole. “Another one! We got another one!” There was some jumping, some cheering, a good deal of glee. For the benefit of parents returning with superfluous tools, one of the siblings summarized, “We got three of them already. This is four!” The orator ran the babe to the mother duck, while her brother, stretched prone on the concrete, ordered, “Hold my feet!” His father put down the kitchenware and grasped a handful of the boy’s t-shirt. I emptied my hands and covered his ankles. Scarcely had we two adults positioned ourselves as spotters when the twelve-year-old tilted his entire upper body into the hole and stretched.

“Got one!” the boy called. His treble voice sang sweetly of childhood, as with hockey muscles he pulled his slight torso effortlessly up.

*

The rescue was going surprisingly well when Foundling Number Five made a break for it in the tall spring grass. The junior hockey-player was on his feet, lunging for the black fuzzball like a loose puck. With primal terror, the puck feinted left toward a clump of weeds, then right into the shelter of some bricks, but the hockey player knew his business. In less than a minute, he closed his hands around the fugitive.

It was all too much for the mother duck. With two still truant, she gave her truncated brood the order to high-tail it down the sidewalk. The hockey-player caught up with her at the corner. If ducks have adrenaline, the whole family was surging with it. Like a crew team sculling for a gold medal, they sped over the concrete and across the street.

“Follow them!” I called, unnecessarily, to my daughter on the run, as the rescue squad returned to the pipe.

With a system so swift and sure that I did not see all the steps of it, the team plucked the last duckling out of the drain and relayed it into the cupped hands of J—, who had followed the duck family down the block, across a street, and into a yard. She stood close to the spot where the matron and her brood had fled under a hedge.

Up and down the street, we all held our breath as she tiptoed the last few feet toward the hedge, bent with slow care, and placed the final straggler near its siblings. She gave it a little boost with her hands.

And just as gently, she backed away.

I fancied the mother counting her young. By common agreement, we all left the family to their reunion.

Around the storm drain, the little assembly began to disperse. The father gathered his unused saucepan and spoon and his triumphant offspring. Passersby put away cameras and returned to their afternoon plans. I gathered my shovel and my straw hat. Someone thoughtfully replaced the metal grate.

*

What does a duck matron feel when, after giving up part of her brood for lost, she calls attendance and finds every fuzz-tuft present after all?

That was Friday. With any luck, she has them all together still on Mother’s Day. With any luck, her family will have nothing worse than the Peril of the Storm Drain to endure for some time yet. With any luck, the middle-school rescuers will stand a little taller after managing the emergency entirely by their own muscle, cooperation, and wit.

For Mother’s Day, I take myself to a comfortable chair and tell their story, noticing with more than a little satisfaction that my presence was not, after all, required.

An altogether unrelated duck - but you get the idea. Photo by Ross Sokolovski on Unsplash

Your Turn:

1. Do you have an amusing Mother’s Day adventure that you like to tell?

2. Do you see random ducks in your neighborhood in the spring?

3. What long-handled scooping tool would you have grabbed first if this had happened in front of your home?

4. Are you doing anything special this Mother’s Day?

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Here’s a flower 🌺 for every mother or grandmother and anyone missing a mom today. ❤️