State trooper helps rescue 8 baby ducks trapped in storm drain

A kindhearted state trooper helped reunite eight baby ducks with their mother after they fell into a storm drain in Massachusetts, authorities said.

Massachusetts State Trooper Jim Maloney spotted the ducklings while patrolling a parking lot early Saturday at Nahant Beach, where they somehow got stuck in water beneath a heavy storm drain grate, state police said.

“The ducklings’ mother and one of their siblings – the only baby who had not fallen through the grate – were standing off at a short distance, because Momma would not leave her trapped babies,” Massachusetts State Police said in a statement.

Maloney then contacted the state’s Department of Conservation and Recreation – which runs Nahant Beach in Essex County, northeast of Boston – and asked the agency to send someone with a crowbar to rescue the ducks, state police said.

An employee from Nahant’s Department of Public Works later pried open the grate before an animal control officer rescued the ducks from the drain with a net, authorities said.

“By this time their mother had moved into a grassy area near the drain to wait,” state police said. “The ducklings were placed in a cardboard box and Trooper Maloney put the box in his cruiser, with the heat on, to wait for the mother duck to come out of the brush to take her babies back.”

The mother duck and her baby who did not fall down the drain later emerged from nearby brush some 40 minutes after Trooper Maloney made the initial find, state police said.

“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.”