Officer rescues 8 ducklings from storm drain as worried mother looks on

A mother duck has been reunited with her eight tiny babies after they fell through the grate of a storm drain thanks to the quick thinking of a Massachusetts State Trooper over the weekend.

The incident occurred at approximately 9:20 a.m. on Sunday morning when Massachusetts State Trooper Jim Maloney was on patrol and happened to discover eight baby ducklings stuck in the bottom of a storm drain -- with the mother duck and the only offspring who didn’t fall through lingering nearby -- after they somehow separated from the family and fall through a grate in the parking lot of Nahant Beach, northeast of Boston.

Trooper Maloney jumped into action and called the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), the department that runs Nahant Beach, to send somebody to his location with a crowbar so he could pry open the heavy grate.

Workers from the DCR, Nahant’s Department of Public Works (DPW) and Lynn Animal Control all arrived on seen shortly after Trooper Maloney’s call to help with the rescue of the trapped ducklings while the mother, who would not leave her trapped babies, looked on.

“Nahant DPW pried open the grate, and the Lynn Animal Control Officer fished the ducklings out the drain with a net,” the Massachusetts State Police (MSP) said in a statement posted to social media. “By this time their mother had moved into a grassy area near the drain to wait. The ducklings were placed in a cardboard box and Trooper Maloney put the box in his cruiser, with the heat on, to wait for the mother duck to come out of the brush to take her babies back.”

At approximately 10 a.m. the mother duck and the other baby emerged from the grass and brush and the babies were taken from the box and placed at the edge of the grass.

“The mother immediately went to them, and together she and her nine babies -- the family fully reunited -- walked back into the grass,” the MSP confirmed.

The social media post, which was published on Sunday, already has garnered more than 2,000 interactions.

“It’s a State Trooper’s most fundamental mission: to help others in a time of crisis and danger. Sometimes those in danger can not speak for themselves. And sometimes they are a different species,” said the Massachusetts State Police. “A small act amid the enormity of the ongoing health crisis, perhaps, but for one mother duck and her tiny babies, it made all the difference in the world.”