SALT LAKE CITY — This time of year, social media is littered with photos of firefighters rescuing families of fuzzy ducklings from the depths of storm drains. But why do these little creatures seem to fall in so often?
Kayden Perez, a firefighter and EMT with Salt Lake City Fire said he's already rescued at least a dozen little ducks, with the "season" for this type of incident just getting going.
"I like running calls. Like no matter what kind of calls they are," he reflected. "We get to help all kinds of different people...including ducks."
Ducklings typically start hatching from the end of May through July or early August, which means Perez and his fellow firefighters will be busy.
"Duck rescuing was not in the fine print of my job," he chuckled.
You'd think mama ducks and her babies would be cooperative during a rescue, but that's not always the case.
"Had some ducks that were stuck further down the drain," Perez explained. "So we had to like flush them with water close to us and we had a net."
YouTube is the secret weapon in rescuing these quacking creatures.
"We'll put one person at the drain with the phone and some duck sounds playing and then the ducks will start to come near the sound and then we just scooped him up with a net," Perez explained.
Blair Stringham, the Northern Region Supervison with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, theorized why the ducklings tend to fall in storm drains so often.
"I think the sound of water naturally attracts them to areas like that," he said. "And so when they hear water down inside of a storm drain, and they probably naturally want to go into it."
Ducks use water as a way to protect themselves from predators found on land.
"They're usually trying to find their way to a water body just because they're more safe there than they would be on like a middle of a park when a cat or something comes along and tries to grab them," Stringham said.
No matter how many times a little duckling falls in a storm drain, a firefighter like Perez will be there to scoop them out and reunite them with their mama, to hopefully live a long, "quacking" life.
