Sometimes you never know what a weekend has in store for you. Such was the case on Sunday, June 9. My wife had been out walking the dog when she spotted a group of people gathering at the corner of Columbia and Court streets, near Mildred Madigan’s house.
Upon further investigation, a group of baby ducks had fallen down the storm drain and the crowd was trying to figure out how to rescue them. By the time my wife got back from her walk and I was able to go check things out, the ducklings had been safely recovered and were in a large cardboard box.
The mother duck, however, was nowhere to be found. The Maine Wardens Service responded with two rangers, who collected the ducklings and began searching for the mama duck.
These ducks had apparently created quite a stir near downtown earlier in the day as they were in the roadway, the rangers told me. After all, what is cuter than a bunch of ducklings following their mother in line?
They were safely scooted into the Meduxnekeag River, but instead of going downstream, the group somehow found its way into the Pearce Brook tributary and made their way upstream. Exactly how they exited Pearce Brook and found their way into a storm drain is a mystery though.
Did they waddle along the street and fall down the grate? I once read in a Darwin Awards book that a group of lemmings were known to follow one another off a cliff, but would ducklings do the same? Or perhaps they somehow got into the runoff pipe accidentally and just happened to be spotted by a person looking down the drain? I guess we’ll never know.
My conversation with the rangers sparked a memory from a few hours earlier. While mowing the grass in the back yard, I heard a strange sounding bird and saw a duck that I had never seen before come flying in for a splashdown. Our backyard borders Pearce Brook and our girls often journey down to the water to look for fish or frogs.
I’ve seen plenty of mallard ducks in the brook before, but this one looked and sounded different. Our puppy took a keen interest in the animal, but thankfully she was leashed. After watching it swim about for a few moments, the duck continued upstream and I didn’t give it much thought.
In hindsight, the duck was most likely the mama duck as it came flying from the direction of Court and Columbia streets and sounded quite distressed. Had I had the foresight, I would of attempted to capture the duck for safekeeping. We began searching along the brook for a bit, but were unsuccessful.
After speaking with the rangers, the most common instinct for people is to collect the babies that are in apparent danger. However, the more useful thing to do, according to the rangers, is to wrangle up the mother first so it can be reunited with the babies.
Joseph Cyr is a staff writer for the Houlton Pioneer Times. He can be reached at pioneertimes@nepublish.com or 532-2281.
