I stopped on my way home from errands to take a picture of a Jacaranda tree just starting to bloom. They seem a little early this year, usually they bloom later in May and into July. This one is at the entrance to Tri-Cities Park where Corky and I sometimes walk. As I took this picture I noticed a young woman trying to stop traffic on Kraemer, the rather busy divided street you can see to the left. As I walked closer to see what she was doing I saw a mama mallard in the crosswalk followed by her ten little ducklings. I stepped out to stop the traffic on my side of the divider and let the little guys get across. But when the mama jumped up on the curb the babies couldn't follow and ran along the curb, headed right for the storm drain. Sure enough, some of them fell in. The young woman just scooped up the rest of them with her hands and put them on the curb where mama was getting very distressed. Then this young woman laid down in the gutter and reached into the storm drain and hauled out two of the little guys, but the rest were out of reach. By this time another young woman had stopped and she also got down in the gutter - oh, to be young again. We tried several methods to retrieve the fallen guys without success, including wrenching a limb off a tree and sticking it down hoping we could manipulate the ducklings closer to the opening. Finally the second woman got a plastic toy out of her car that looked to be part of a dressing room set for, maybe, a Barbie. It has a scoop shape and it did the trick. She stuck it down in the drain and nudged the two fuzzy little feathered balls onto it. When she lifted them out onto the grass the mama came running to herd all her babies toward the lake. We three ladies congratulated each other and went on our way feeling very heroic.
They are very tiny babies and must have been hatched quite recently - so tiny, so cute.
