By Christian Schiavone/cschiavo@cnc.com
GateHouse News Service
Posted Jul 10, 2010 @ 10:21 PM
Belmont, Mass. —
It took an escort from a group of good Samaritans and a lengthy rescue from a storm drain, but a mallard and her ducklings finally made it safely through Belmont to their destination in Cambridge over Memorial Day weekend.
The feathered family found itself in trouble twice — first as the mother tried to lead her 11 freshly hatched ducklings through Belmont Center on a busy Saturday evening and again the following day when they again ventured down Concord Avenue toward the Cambridge line.
Saturday
Diane Miller had just finished dinner at Stone Hearth Pizza with her two daughters and some friends when they spotted the duck and 10 of her babies waddling their way across Leonard Street at about 6 p.m. on May 29.
“We decided to accompany them to make sure they found their way to the pond at the high school, which seemed like a long and dangerous journey for such little ducklings,” said Miller in an e-mail. “We stopped several times along the way when the ducks decided they were tired and the babies would all snuggled up against the mom and rest.”
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Police Officer Jim Gallo responded and began directing traffic around the growing crowd. Maguranis arrived soon after. He quickly removed the metal grate and rescued eight of the ducklings, but determined the other three had slipped into a pipe leading further down into a larger water pipe underneath.
Refusing to give up, Maguranis, several neighbors and a rescue technician from the Animal Rescue League tried to coax the stranded ducklings back to the surface. Finally, the technician played recordings of a mother duck calling her ducklings on a laptop while Maguranis slid a makeshift plastic ramp down the pipe. More than a half hour later, the last duckling finally emerged.
The mallard and her ducklings were set free in a nearby pond on a golf course across Blanchard Road in Cambridge.
http://www.wickedlocal.com/belmont/newsnow/x909202681/Animal-control-residents-help-ducklings-get-acclimated