One sunny springtime afternoon in Longdon, whilst picking up our daughter from St. James School, word came to us that peculiar noises had been heard from a local storm drain, so we went to investigate...

Sure enough, when we arrived, we could hear a commotion coming from the drain. On closer inspection we could just make out some ducklings down there!

So how did this happen? Well, it seems that a local Mallard had lead its young brood across the drain grid and consequently half had fallen into the dark abyss between the slots!

Funnily enough we'd seen pictures of this sort of thing on the web some years before, but we'd always the story was fake. So we stand corrected; ducks really are that daft!

After a quick walk home we returned to the drain armed with a crowbar, a net and a recycling bin *TIP: Lichfield District Recycling bins are an invaluable tool in the specialist field of duck rescue and also many other everyday DIY tasks, though best keep this to yourself.

We lifted off the cover and were relieved to see a Bewildered but healthy gaggle* of ducklings. All together now... Ahhhhhhhh! (BTW you can click on any of these pictures to enlarge) *Paddling, badling, brace, flock, paddling, raft, skiff, team?!

We soon got down to the business of getting them out of there:

Once they were all out, with no sign of mum or dad anywhere, we took the ducklings to the closest and safest spot (with the kind help of another local villager). To this day we don't honestly know if they were ever eventually reunited with their inattentive parents, but at least we gave them a better chance than they had down the storm drain...

Finally we tied a strong mesh over the drain cover, with holes just small enough to prevent tiny ducklings falling through in the near future. Conclusion: Ducks arn't very bright! Ducklings genuinely do fall through the grids in storm drains, so in springtime keep a look out and an ear open!

Trivia: At the time we were developing a website for the Croft Primary School in Armitage. We needed a tweeting sound for a little 'frogger' style game we were making for them as part of the project. Coincidentally we'd recorded a bit of video during the above rescue which contained just the very audio we needed! So that's the story behind the tweeting sound in the little game we made.