A Mother’s Love
It was a rainy Saturday afternoon in late Spring and I drove to a local baby store to buy diapers for our first grandchild. Leaving the store I ran to my truck across the parking lot. I noticed a large brown duck circling a storm drain. As I approached, the duck came waddling up to me, quacking frantically. When she knew she had my attention, she turned and waddled back to the storm drain. As I looked down into the drain I counted eleven small yellow ducklings … I thought for a moment that I was already late, very wet and there was nothing I could really do. Besides, the drain cover was too heavy for me to move alone. No excuse sounded good enough and I knew I couldn’t leave. This was a mother duck and her ducklings were in trouble. She had come to me for help. As I stood there helpless, other people approached to see why I was standing in the parking lot, in the pouring rain, talking to a duck. She circled me relentlessly quacking the entire time … it must have been quite a spectacle.
Then a young man and his wife approached me and I explained the situation. Together we lifted off the grate and he went in after the ducklings. One by one he handed them up to me. I had a dog carrier in my truck so began filling it with little quackers. Seven ducklings, he assumed the rescue was complete. I knew I had counted eleven, four were still lost.
By now a small crowd had gathered to watch. With seven ducklings in the carrier I moved away. The mother duck climbed in and quieted the ducklings. When I tried to close the carrier’s wire door the mother duck flew from it in alarm. Those assembled circled the duck and tried to put her back inside the carrier, but she protested loudly.
I stood quietly listening and worrying … there were baby ducks, four, still down in that drain. The young man and his wife asked me why I was standing my rainy vigil? There were no sounds from the drain except gushing water. I explained that there were still four missing ducklings. Suddenly we heard them quack.
The young man, this time armed with a flashlight, smiled and said “Four more, huh?” He then disappeared again into the storm drain. Suddenly his head popped out and he had a huge smile. In his jacket were the four ducklings quacking away.
We covered the storm drain and put the little ducks in with mum and their siblings. I said I would take them. As I got into my truck a line of cars formed behind me. With lights on high-beam and windshield wipers flapping, as though in a parade, the line of vehicles approached the pond. Near the water I opened the carrier. The mother duck pushed her ducklings out one at a time. She and her entire brood were safe. My heart was singing and everyone was smiling.
I didn’t get the names of any of the rescuers or ask them what made them get involved in saving eleven tiny ducklings. I only know I felt that mother duck was counting on us.
When I arrived home, dripping wet, my wife looked at me with some annoyance and wanted to know where I had been. I just smiled and said “Someone quite small reminded me just how precious life is and that nothing can match the power and protection of A Mother’s Love”.
John Robinson, Kansas
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