Make way for ducklings

This is a very nice small town story:

A mother and duckling were reunited Sunday after Corte Madera firefighters devised a handmade scoop and rescued the baby duck from a storm drain near the post office on Pixley Avenue.Corte Madera Fire Department battalion chief Pete Davis said the duckling rescue took a little ingenuity, but what amazed him most was the reluctance of the mother duck to leave the middle of the street until help arrived.

“We were just returning from a fire alarm call,” said Davis, who works out of Station 14 on the corner of Pixley and Tamalpais avenues. “Cars were stopped in the street, so we knew immediately something was going on. The mother duck wouldn’t leave until she got the attention of someone.”

The Marin Humane Society, which normally handles calls about injured or missing animals, was unavailable on another extended call. So the Corte Madera firefighters sprung into action as engineer John Higgins connected a small cardboard box to a pole using duct tape while others helped shoo the bird toward the trap from a nearby manhole.

Within a few minutes, the tiny bird, 2-3 inches from head to tail, was scooped up in the box, which had been sprinkled with bread crumbs, and returned it to its mother.

The last Davis saw of the mother and ducklings, they were waddling across the street and headed back to the pond at Town Park.