A chick is fished out of the overflow with a ladle
Photo: Frankfurt Fire Department
By Kolya Gaertner
The fire brigade was happy to spoon up this soup: they rescued twelve ducklings from a drain pipe with a soup ladle.
The fluffy waddles fell into an overflow pipe in a water feature pool in front of the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) on Bockenheimer Landstraße in Frankfurt-Westend and could not get out. The desperately quacking mother duck attracted the attention of passers-by.
By chance, a rescue vehicle stationed nine kilometers away in station 30 drove by and took care of the baby ducks.
Despite extensive equipment – from chainsaws to bolt cutters, hydraulic shears, plasma cutters to waders – there was no chick rescue device on board.
But the firefighters had an idea: they marched into a nearby canteen and borrowed a large soup ladle.
After the rescue, they paddled back through the basin
They spooned the chicks out of the tube one by one. They immediately waddled to the happy duck mama. Then the reunited family of ducks plopped back into the pool and paddled around happily. They had already forgotten the pipe danger.
After the rescue, the mother duck and chicks paddle back through the pool
Photo: Frankfurt Fire Department
So that nothing happens again, the pipe that endangered the chicks was “of course well secured”, according to the fire brigade. Duck good, all good.