Not ducking around: North Strabane Township Public Works saves trapped ducklings
Courtesy of Colleen Mellor
North Strabane Township road crew members Pat Almo, left, and Eric Miller rescue ducklings stranded in a catch basin along Queen’s Way, off Weavertown Road. The road crew members responded to a call from concerned residents Wednesday afternoon.
Courtesy of Colleen Mellor
Eric Miller rescues a duckling from a catch basin along Queen’s Way, off Weavertown Road, Wednesday afternoon. Miller and co-worker Pat Almo saved six or seven ducklings trapped in the stormwater basin after residents placed a call to North Strabane Township.
The call that came into North Strabane Township Public Works Wednesday wasn’t “eggs-actly” the norm.
“One of the residents from Heathrow – it’s a private development, we don’t maintain those roads – they called into the township to say there are ducks that are stuck,” said Colleen Mellor, assistant director of public works.
Mellor, Pat Almo and Eric Miller, both public works employees, flocked to Queen’s Way off Weavertown Road, where community members were waiting, phones out, eager to witness the rescue mission at the stormwater basin unfold.
“There were six or seven (ducklings). They were just swimming around in the bottom,” Mellor said.
It wasn’t fowl play; the ducklings had slipped through the quacks, into a catch basin, as they followed their mother single-file down the road. Tuesday’s rain filled the basin just high enough for the ducklings to float around in, but not so high that they were carried from the basin to a creek or retention pond.
Miller, ankle-deep in catch basin water, handed duckling after duckling to Almo, who rinsed the baby birds and returned them safely to their worried mother duck.
Mellor said one resident watching the rescue mission told her the hen had been pacing the area.
As the ducklings waddled off with their mother to fresher waters, the Heathrow community thanked Almo and Miller for saving the baby birds from their “pre-duck-ament.”