Officers help nine ducklings escape Vancouver Police Department headquarters

[tweet/photo]

It’s not often we hear of police officers facilitating an escape. But that’s just what happened last weekend.

On Sunday afternoon, a concerned citizen spotted a family of ducks — a mother duck and her nine ducklings — on the ledge of the third floor patio of Vancouver Police Department headquarters.

Police officers responded to the scene before wildlife rescue arrived, and quickly determined that the ducklings had recently hatched in the building’s rooftop vegetable garden. Their mother was trying, unsuccessfully, to help them escape the building.

“Police responded to the call and found the dabbling ducks attempting to break out of the secure building,” the news release said. “Officers determined that the eggs were likely laid in the area of the roof top vegetable garden and remained hidden under the watchful eye of their mother, until it was time for them to fly the coop.”

According to the Vancouver Sun, three off-duty officers and a wildlife rescue volunteer then corralled and coaxed the ducklings into a box and carried them to the street below. Fortunately, the mother duck knew to follow her brood.

“The rescuers took the ducklings down to street level where the plan was to entice the mother duck off the patio,” the news release said. “As hoped, the mother flew down and followed the wildlife volunteer and the box containing her ducklings toward False Creek. As the parade made their way towards the water, police and the rescue volunteer stopped traffic, cyclists and the odd dog before the mother and her ducklings were reunited at the water’s edge where they were safely released.”

In the summer of 2013, a group of Vancouver cyclists reunited a mother duck with three of her ducklings after they fell into a sewer grate.

“It was a storybook, Walt Disney ending,” cyclist Christina Niven told the Province, adding it “was a pretty awesome thing to see 10 to 12 grown adults all coming together to save the little baby ducklings.”

That same summer in Surrey, England, a police officer helped escort about 50 Mallard ducks off a busy highway into the safety of a nearby shed.

[video]