Ducklings Rescued From Sewer Grate In Aspinwall
ASPINWALL (KDKA) -- Crews went to work Wednesday morning after spotting a group of ducklings trapped in a sewer grate in Aspinwall.
Around 9 a.m., five or possibly six ducklings fell through a sewer grate on Freeport Road. Four were pulled to safety immediately, but crews spent two hours working to save the others.
"Aspinwall Public Works actually came and took the sewer grate off for us," Celena Celender with Pittsburgh Animal Care & Control said, "and we were able to get about four of the ducklings out."
But two were still in there.
"Two of the ducklings went further down the pipe," Celender said.
Those four rescued ducklings were safely kept in a watering can, a strategy to basically keep the mother from leaving.
"You want to keep them contained so the mother will follow them," Celender said. "Usually once you give the ducklings back to the mother, she's going to leave with them. So we wanted to keep her around as long as possible, in case we got the other two."
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At one point, the four rescues were used as bait to try to lure their siblings out of a long waterway. It didn't work. PWSA stepped in next.
"I'll do anything for animals," a PWSA employee said.
They sloshed and pushed water through the waterway using shovels, trying to figure out where it went, eventually determining it was just down the road. But still no ducklings. Animal Care & Control was going to keep checking back, but their hope is that they found their way out.
"If they're not in the pipe, we're literally about 50 feet from the river," Celender said, "so they would have just flushed out to the river."
