A City of Richmond public works crew took like ducks to water to save a trapped Richmond "family."
The crew, along with bylaw officers, came to the rescue after worried residents called the city about a noisy family of ducklings who'd fallen through a storm grate and were trapped.
However, whenever anyone tried to rescue them from the sewer in the townhouse complex on Williams Road, the frightened ducklings ran further down the steep, dark drain.
The workers opened a manhole connecting the complex to the city system and two ducklings immediately waddled out.
But the noise from people gathered around the opening scared the other little ducklings away.
The only way to get the ducklings to the manhole was to run water down a pipe to float them towards the manhole.
The residents then chipped in to loan their garden hoses to city staff to feed water into the manhole. This produced two more ducklings, but one was quite waterlogged by the time it made its way to the manhole.
City worker Zach Wilkinson then took the ducklings under his wing and placed them in a bucket and into the city truck where he blow-dried them at the truck's defrost vent.
He then toweled off the waterlogged duck with a rag and held it by the vent to give it a little extra attention as it was soaked through.
And, just when the bylaw officers were preparing to take the ducklings to an animal shelter, residents directed them to the ducklings' concerned mother and another duckling in the next yard.
City staff placed them on the ground in front of her and they happily waddled off with her reunited family.
