A little off the Subject

Right now I am finishing up my medical qualifications and that's not very exciting. But while I am getting all of this done, I am still living a normal life.......for the most part.

I wanted to share a story with you that happened to me over the weekend and it made me feel really good. So here it is:

On Sunday, my Mom and I drove through the back of our neighborhood to get to the gas station. To get there, we pass by a little pond that's sits in the middle of our neighborhood. I pointed out a female duck to my mom that was across the street from the pond and she mentioned that she had seen a female duck just the other day with 9 little ducklings. We then noticed at the same time that this female duck was circling a storm drain and seemed kind of panicked. Our first thought was: What if she was the momma duck from the other day and her ducklings were in the drain? We decided to get gas and come back the same way to see if she was still there.

We drove back by about 10 minutes later and she was still there. We parked the car and went over to look in the drain. And sure enough, all 9 ducklings were in the drain squawking away. We tried to call the Animal Control and apparently they don't work on Sundays? This did not seem right, but there wasn't really anything we could do but leave a message.

About this time a couple had come walking out of a side street  and saw us standing there looking into the drain and came over to see what was going on. The man tried to lift the grate and it came loose. We decided to try and take it off and get the ducks ourselves. This was more of a task than we had anticipated. The average storm grate weighs 175lbs (or so I'm told.) Did I mention the woman helping was pregnant? So after the initial lift she had to let go for safety reasons. That left me and the man to lift this thing....success!! Not without a few scrapes but totally worth it.

Once we got the grate off, a man who was fishing in the pond lent us his net and we got the ducklings out! I have to give a shout out to the man who helped me with the grate because he was the one who willingly went into the sewer water in his flip flops to get the ducks. We set the ducklings into the grass and the momma duck came over right away and led them to safety.

I was so glad that we were able to help out. It made me feel really good knowing that we probably saved their lives. It rained pretty hard that night and I don't know that they would have been able to handle the water flowing in.

I hope this story has made you feel as good as helping them made me feel.

 Next Stop? Saving Penguins from the freezing water?......I don't think so.

Autumn :)