Ducks in a Drain

Why is this female wood duck running around outside Bellingrath shrieking? Not quacking, exactly. No, this duck (which Sarah & I ran into this afternoon) is in serious distress.

The answer, we soon learn from two Rhodes students standing beside this drain, is that there are six ducklings cheeping at the bottom of this storm drain. The students tell us that Campus Safety is on the way.

While we wait for Campus Safety, I find a fallen branch and lower it down the drain, in hopes that the ducklings will climb out. Unfortunately, they are either a) not that smart or b) not that coordinated, because they just continue wandering around the bottom of the drain, calling for their mother; some attempt in vain to climb the mud walls of the drain.

When Campus Safety arrives, we lift the grate from the drain and stare down at the helpless ducklings. What now?

Always decisive, Sarah jumps (well, not exactly jumps, because she's afraid of squishing a duckling underfoot) into the drain to rescue the poor creatures.

At this point, the mother has gotten farther away from the group of humans, and I start to get afraid that she might leave her ducklings behind. Fortunately, she sticks around, and by the time Sarah lifts the first fuzzy little duckling to safety, it runs right to Mama, soon to be joined by three more.

The other two are lifted out by Sarah, and we all celebrate (a small crowd has collected around the drain while this has been happening). I'm all set to take a picture of Sarah smiling in the drain before she gets out, when--

Officer Smith notices there's another duckling still stuck in the drain. Sarah whips around to look at it, ruining my shot. At this point, Mom has started to march away (not, apparently, having counted her recovered offspring), so Sarah quickly lifts the little one out and aims it in the right direction. Of course, it runs in the exact opposite direction, but the well-meaning Rhodes crowd block its path to show it the way.

It rejoins its family, and the ducks all march around the courtyard and up the stairs (with some effort on the part of the younger members of the family) in a victory lap before waddling off into the sunset. (All right, not exactly a sunset, but into the rainy mess.)

Sarah finally poses for a picture in the drain, surrounded by some of the proudest, happiest Rhodes students (and one very excited Campus Safety officer) you'll ever meet the day before finals, and then climbs out to get cleaned up, because she is covered in mud.

Now, what these ducks were doing on the Rhodes campus remains a mystery, but it was raining pretty hard, and Rhodes has pretty bad drainage problems; maybe they thought it was a pond.