They were exciting and also frustrating hours for the animal ambulance in Hoogeveen. Employees spent half a day going to free six young ducks from a rain pipe in a garage box. There was help from all sides, but long it seemed that the fate of the animals was sealed.
The animal ambulance was notified at the beginning of the afternoon. Someone had seen the ducks on a roof terrace. The animals had already jumped a ‘floor’ lower, on a garage box. “The reporter wondered how high they could jump,” says Saskia Bos, who was involved in it on behalf of the animal ambulance. “Young ducks run down the roof, after mothers. It sometimes happens that they break a leg or even survive.”
In this case it didn’t go well either. The six draws (young ducks) had landed in the rainpipe of the garage box, as two employees of the animal ambulance saw when they arrived. “We knew about where they were, because we heard squeaks. The mother duck was still on the roof.”
It was decided to saw the rain pipe on the floor to see how deep it went. That immediately turned out to be a problem: the pipe went another meter into the ground. “And every time it was tried to grab them, they shot further into the pipe.” Excaving was not an option because the pipe went through a concrete floor.
After the photo, read how the rescue campaign continued: