EDMONDS — The call came in to city maintenance headquarters shortly before 1 p.m.
A motorist driving along Olympic View Drive near 72nd Avenue W. on May 4 watched a mother duck lead her ducklings across the street when one of the young ones fell into a storm drain.
City maintenance workers Tom Bach, Rich Wichers, Pat Johnson and storm lead man Mike Johnson brought a special truck with a water hose in case they discovered the duckling trapped in a pipe under the street.
A flagger diverted drivers around the truck.
Two ducklings had fallen through the metal grate covering a storm drain.
“I couldn’t see any of the little ducks in the basin, but you could hear them,” Johnson said.
At first, Johnson said, workers thought ducklings might be trapped in a large culvert that runs under Olympic View Drive.
“So what we did was put some water in to try to flush them out onto the other side,” Johnson said. “I had a net to try to catch them that way.”
The ducklings weren’t in the culvert, though.
A short search later, workers found one duckling under a manhole and another duckling beneath a second manhole.
“These new babies are so tiny, they fall right through some of the bigger drains,” Johnson said.
A neighbor snapped some pictures with her cellphone.
This wasn’t the first time city workers rescued trapped ducklings.
“I just did this probably two weeks ago,” Johnson said. “But it was just one baby duck in a catch basin that was only a couple feet deep, so I was able to reach in and grab it.”
Mother duck watched workers from the safety of nearby bushes, Johnson said.
A resident gathered the remaining ducklings and their mother and drove them to a pond near the Meadowdale Playfields less than a mile away.
Johnson and his fellow workers later reunited the two ducklings with their mother at the pond.
“It took us a little time to do it, but we saved the ducks.”
Oscar Halpert: 425-339-3429, ohalpert@heraldnet.com.
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