It seems all Council requests for service are not created equal after a heart-warming rescue by utilities technician Mark Adam.

Eleven ducklings and their mother were successfully rescued from a stormwater drain earlier this month after the unusual request for service (RFS) came through.

Once Council’s customer service was alerted by a resident to the plight of the trapped ducklings, Mr Adam armed himself with a net and some tools and headed to a creek beside Llyod George Road.

He could hear a mother duck from the bottom of a stormwater drain close to the creek.

Looking down he could see the trapped ducklings, which he estimated were only two days old, about 1.5m down at the bottom of the drain.

“The mother duck was really going off,” said Mr Adam, “so I used my net to move her on hoping the ducklings would follow her.”

It took him three goes to scoop 10 ducklings out.

“Then I took them to the other end of the creek where there’s another exit about 400 metres away. The sound of her ducklings encouraged the mother duck and a few minutes later she came out of that exit too, with her 11th duckling behind her.”

Mr Adam said it’s back to Mother Nature now after the duck whanau were returned safely to the creek.

Mr Adam has worked at Council for nine years and knows more about drains than most people as part of the DrainWise team who work to sort out Gisborne’s wastewater systems.

It’s the second time he’s been called out to rescue ducklings. Other interesting rescues include retrieving keys and phones that have also fallen down drains.

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