They needed help.
Recently, Andrea Kim and her husband, Andrew, noticed a duck wandering around their neighborhood. At first, the sight didn’t seem unusual. But then they noticed something strange about where she was spending her time.
The duck kept standing directly on top of a storm drain.
When the couple approached, they began hearing faint squeaking sounds coming from below.
They looked into the drain and discovered a heartbreaking scene: a group of tiny ducklings was trapped at the bottom.
“It was pouring rain,” Andrew said in a video for The Dodo. “You’ve gotta be careful because sewers can fill up with water.”
The couple immediately knew they needed to get the babies out. With rain pouring down, they called the fire department and waited for help to arrive.
But the ducklings couldn’t wait forever.
“We were fighting against time,” Andrew said.
Realizing that help wasn’t going to arrive quickly enough, Andrea and Andrew decided they had to find another way to reach the trapped babies.
“We started Googling, ‘Is it possible to just lift the sewer drain lid?’” Andrea said.
They eventually found a YouTube video showing someone removing a similar drain cover. After watching it, they decided to give it a try.
Andrew put all his strength into the heavy cover and managed to pull it off.
Now they could finally reach the ducklings.
Working together, the couple carefully scooped the babies out of the drain and placed them into a laundry basket. Throughout the rescue, their mother remained nearby, watching anxiously from the grass.
“The mother duck was waiting right next to the grass area,” Andrew said.
Once every duckling was safely inside the basket, Andrea and Andrew lifted them out of the drain. They gently tipped the basket onto the ground—and the babies immediately knew where they belonged.
One by one, the ducklings hurried toward their waiting mother.
“It was just beautiful to see the baby ducks running towards the mom,” Andrew said.
The entire rescue took only about 45 minutes from the moment Andrea and Andrew first discovered the stranded ducklings.
But those 45 minutes meant everything to one worried mother.
“I felt how happy and relieved that mother duck was,” Andrea said. “It was just such a special moment.”
After all the rain, uncertainty and frantic searching for a solution, the little family was finally together again—and safely away from the storm drain.