Estimated read time: Less than a minute
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
DRAPER -- A momma duck and her 12 babies gave residents of a Draper neighborhood a surprise Sunday afternoon.
The tiny ducklings got scared while passing through the neighborhood and fell through a grate in the gutter and into a drain pipe.
After prying the grate loose, Chandler Zimmerman climbed into the 2 ½ foot diameter pipe and started scooping up the tiny ducks. However, one of the ducks got away, so Chandler went down a manhole and crawled about 300 feet under the street to locate the last duckling.
"I just grabbed it in the tunnel about halfway, and crawled out with it," Chandler said.
"Strangely, the mom stayed around until we got every single one of them out," said J.R. Rowley, who also helped in the rescue efforts.
It took about 25 minutes to rescue the last duckling and then the entire family of ducks wandered off to a safer place.
