Welcome to Enchanted in America, where we usually search literature for
scenes of enchantment; and
insights about how enchanted states contribute to united states. . . .
. . . But today we get to relax and have a story. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed participating and writing it down.
My youngest child does not usually charge into the house calling “Mom!!” and searching rooms for me, the way she did after school on Friday.
“Mom, you have to come!” she commanded from the doorway to my bedroom. “Right now!”
“Hi,” I said, closing my book. Pleasantries were out of the question. She was marching back the way she had come and briefing me at the same time.
“Some baby ducks fell in the —”
I heard her tone but not her words as I slipped into a pair of sandals and followed her out the front door, which stood open, the way she had left it.
The elementary school day had just ended. At this hour, a stream of children and families usually flowed past in the homeward direction. Today, a small knot of pedestrians had formed in front of our house. The oldest pair of siblings, age twelve and younger, perched at the edge of the storm drain at my curb, plotting strategy. The heavy metal grate lay beside the open hole.
From under the street came the loud “cheeeep — cheeeep — cheeeep!” of one or more frightened juvenile birds - ducklings, according to my daughter.
In my neighbor’s yard, behind the tall grass, a mother duck and a handful of downy babies hesitated, facing the sound of the missing young.
I followed my daughter to the open drain and looked down. Runoff from recent rain puddled below the outlet of a horizontal pipe. I expected to see ducklings paddling in the sludge, but the black water returned my gaze with perverse serenity. Pitiful and forlorn cries continued to rise from below.
“Where are they?” I asked, aware that I must be missing something obvious.
“In the pipe,” someone answered.
I adjusted the angle of my gaze and saw them, a trio or more of mud-colored babies cowering in the aqua pipe. My daughter’s eyes appealed to me: Fix this.
Another adult approached from up the street and sized up the situation. “Does anyone have a lacrosse stick?” he murmured calmly.
I offered to see what I could find for tools. My daughter and another girl took noisy turns jumping on the sewer lid across the street to discourage the ducklings from fleeing in that direction and out of reach. I admired their cleverness as I passed through the side gate in search of supplies.
The calm parent and I returned at the same time, he with a saucepan and a long-handled kitchen spoon, I with a shovel and an old straw hat. We had the same idea about scooping the refugees into a container and airlifting them to their waiting mother. But the kids had us by several steps.
A shout went up from the committee around the drain-hole. “Another one! We got another one!” There was some jumping, some cheering, a good deal of glee. For the benefit of parents returning with superfluous tools, one of the siblings summarized, “We got three of them already. This is four!” The historian ran the babe to the mother duck, while her brother, stretched prone on the concrete, ordered, “Hold my feet.” His father put down the kitchenware and grasped a handful of the boy’s t-shirt. I emptied my hands and covered the ankles. Scarcely had we two adults positioned ourselves as spotters when the twelve-year-old tilted his entire upper body into the hole and stretched.
He knew his business. “Got one!” the boy called. His treble voice sang sweetly of childhood, as with hockey muscles he pulled his slight torso effortlessly up.
The rescue was going surprisingly well when Foundling Number Five made a break for it in the grass. The junior hockey-player was on his feet, lunging for the black fuzzball like a loose puck. With primal terror, the puck feinted left toward a clump of weeds, then right into the shelter of some bricks, but the hockey player, once again, knew his business. In less than a minute, he closed his hands around the fugitive.
It was all too much for the mother duck. With two still truant, she gave her truncated brood the order to high-tail it down the sidewalk. The hockey-player caught up with her at the corner. If ducks have adrenaline, the whole family was surging with it. Like a crew team sculling for a gold medal, they sped over the concrete and across the street.
“Follow them!” I commanded my daughter, while the rescue squad returned to the pipe to retrieve the last duckling. “Don’t lose them!” I called, unnecessarily, to my child’s retreating back.
With a system so swift and sure that I did not see all the steps of it, the team plucked the last duckling out of the drain and relayed it all the way to my daughter, who had followed the duck family down the block, across a street, into a yard, and under a hedge. Carefully, she placed the last straggler near its siblings.
And then she backed away.
Around the storm drain, the little assembly dispersed. The father gathered his unused saucepan and spoon and his triumphant offspring. Passersby put away cameras and returned to their afternoon plans. I gathered my shovel and my straw hat. Someone thoughtfully replaced the metal grate.
What does a duck matron feel when, after giving up part of her brood for lost, she calls the roll and finds every fuzz-tuft present after all?
That was Friday. With any luck, she has them all together still on Mother’s Day. With any luck, her family will have nothing worse than the Peril of the Storm Drain to endure for some time yet. With any luck, the middle-school rescuers will stand a little taller after managing the emergency entirely by their own muscle, cooperation, and wit.
For Mother’s Day, I take myself to a comfortable chair and tell their story, noticing with more than a little satisfaction that my presence was not, after all, required.
This was, indeed, an enchanting story. I was torn between wanting to race through the story to see the outcome with wanting to savor the story. Easy fix: I read it twice. Once fast to satisfy my curiosity of the ducklings' fate, the other to enjoy the tale for your use of prose. Thanks for the entertainment!!