Sitting in Ed’s Barber Shop this morning yakking with Ed and one of his clip jobs while on my morning walk with Jin-Jin my dog. I walk downtown because I walk on sidewalks because of balance problems due to my MS. I saw a young lady with a plastic bag of ducklings. I raised ducks way back in the distant past and I could hear and see that the ducklings were very very stressed. I asked the young lady what she was doing with the ducklings. She stated in a very distressed voice that a mother duck and 7 ducklings were crossing the street and someone swerved trying to hit the family of ducks. She ran out in the street and risked her life to stop the car and the mother duck got divided from 5 of her ducklings.
The mother duck went about a block and a half west towards a footbridge over the Chippewa river with 2 of her ducklings. Having raised ducks I could hear her giving her distress calls trying to locate her other ducklings who by this time had sought shelter in a parking lot under a car. I have to digress a bit . I told the young lady that the ducklings in the plastic bag were totally stressing and she should put them where they were last together with their mother duck. We went and put them there and stood guard and waited to see if the mother would come back to rescue the ducklings but after a half hour we realized that she was too freaked out and we had to do something.
I asked her if she had a box in her car and she did. There were 4 of us gathered there trying to help and I had them herd them to a cement bench that we could trap them in. I told them I had really gentle hands and I would grab them. I started to grab them and they saw how I was doing it and I got two of them and the other 3 people got the other 3. We put them in the and I had her close the lid to help settle down the ducklings. I told them we had to go down to the river a block and a half away because I could still hear the mother giving her distress calls. I told them to go down to the river and put them in the river. Both of the women doubted me but I reminded me I raised ducks and I knew what I was doing. They put the 5 ducklings in the water they were peeping like crazy and the mother duck hiding alongside of the shore about 50 feet away came out and they rejoined. The rest was just Duck Soup.
I have MS and am at year 11. I had a dog and a cane. The young lady had RA and was struggling also. What we don’t do for a duck.