ELGIN (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Two suburban utility workers rushed to the rescue after getting a call about a handful of “stuck ducks.”
It started with a 911 call just after 5 p.m. Tuesday to report a distressed duck near a catch basin off of Big Timber Road in Elgin. The call was transferred to 311, and a dispatcher contacted the city's on-call sewer workers.
Two utility workers responded and immediately heard peeping coming from a drain that was closely guarded by a quacking mother duck.
According to the Daily Herald, the workers spent the next two hours carefully removing eight ducklings from a four-foot hole. The first seven were rescued with a net used to fish out keys and other items that have fallen into the sewer from time to time.
The last one had to be rescued by hand. Utility worker Kevin Smart climbed into the hole to get the last one out.
"He wasn't looking so good, but I think he was just tired and scared," Smart told the Daily Herald. "Once he hit the water and realized how close he was to mom, he got a burst of energy."
All eight babies were reunited with their mother at a nearby retention pond.
The Elgin utility crew that made the rescue - Kevin Smart and Matt Waterman - have been receiving lots of praise on social media for caring about wildlife.
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