Compassionate Humans Help a Frantic Mother Duck Rescue Her Ducklings From a Swimming Pool

When a group of ducklings got stuck in his backyard pool in 2012, homeowner Evan Zucker and his friend Brian stepped in to help after the frantic mother exhausted all her own options.

I found this mother duck and her 10 ducklings in my backyard swimming pool this morning. The mother, who has visited before with her mate, had no trouble getting out, but the ducklings were not able to climb out of the pool.

The men first tried creating ramps for the ducklings to use, but they went unused. Brian then used a pool net to scoop out some of the ducklings, but they jumped back in because their mother was still in the pool. Finally, the men coaxed both the mother and ducklings to the steps to the shallow end where they had stacked rocks onto the top step. The mother exited first and then the ducklings followed one by one until they all returned to terra firma. The little runt took a bit more time than the others, but eventually caught up with the family.

Finally, we put a ceramic turtle and some lava rocks from my fire pit on the top step of the pool and chased the mother in that direction. The mother jumped out, and the ducklings eventually figured out how to climb the turtle and rocks to safely escape.

via Boing Boing