Chalk up another precious moment for Officer Frederick Lynch.
He helped rescue ducklings from a storm drain today.
"You never know as a police officer what your next call's gonna be," Lynch said.
And this call came in this morning around 9, from an Upper Gwynedd Township woman who'd been watching and listening to a mother duck standing over a storm drain. The mother duck was quacking non-stop.
"All nine of her little guys fell down into the storm drain, about two feet," Lynch said. They were trapped down a drain in the North Penn Market Place Shopping Center in Montgomery County.
But Officer Lynch is no novice when it comes to duck rescues. He estimates that they get three or four calls a year. "It's kind of a common occurrence when mothers are having their ducklings."
Lynch made a quick call to his friends over at the Public Works department. John Maguire and Howard "Peanut" Quinn came right over with a front-loader, plywood and a gentle touch.
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"Yep, we're used to this. . .They used the front-loader to get the grate up, then put the wood over the drain pipe so the little ducklings didn't go down the pipe. Then one of 'em jumped down into the drain, and scooted them into the bucket."
But the danger had not completely passed. Back in charge, the mother started again for the local creek with her ducklings close behind -- waddling right across Sumneytown Pike.
Officer Lynch went into action, stopping traffic to get the mother and her ducklings safely across the roadway.
"I called my wife after and she said, 'You know, you did that once before and gave me a precious moment,'" Lynch said, laughing.
"Ah, just another day in my job description."
