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Three ducklings were pulled up from the bottom of a storm drain on Washington College’s campus Friday morning thanks to a quick response by the buildings and grounds crew.

Around 10 a.m., a mother duck and her three ducklings were waddling across campus behind Smith Hall when they came across a grate, and it was all downhill from there.

“(The mother duck) gets across, (and) one of her three ducklings promptly goes straight down,� Sarah Feyerherm recalled during a phone interview Monday. “The other two somehow made it across, but when she realizes she lost one of them, she turned around and came back, and that’s when the other two ducklings came back, and they fell in.

“I was just watching the whole thing in horror. You know how there’s just nothing you can do about it, you’re just sitting there watching it,� she added.

Feyerherm, vice president of student affairs and dean of students at Washington College, was leaving a meeting in Bunting Hall, feeling a little down when she saw a mother duck and her three ducklings walking toward her.

“I was watching her because it was just cute and sweet,� Feyerherm said.

It did not stay “cute and sweet� for long.

“It did occur to me that she might have a little trouble navigating over that (grate) with her ducklings,� Feyerherm said.

The mother duck tripped on the grate, and Feyerherm said that was when she knew the family crossing would “not end well.�

After all three of her ducklings fell to the bottom of a five-foot deep trough, the mother duck began to “quack like crazy.� Her ducklings, unharmed, were quacking in response.

Feyerherm made a few calls, and about five minutes later the college’s buildings and grounds crew arrived on the scene.

It took them about three minutes to get the pieces of the grate unbolted.

Mallory Westlund, grounds/landscape manager at the college, said in an email to the Kent County Â鶹´«Ã½ that she, John Larimore, finish carpenter, and John Hughes, maintenance technician, worked together to rescue the fledglings.

“The trough was too deep to reach by hand and too narrow for a shovel,� Westlund said. Instead, she laid on the ground and used grabbers — the kind typically used by the crew to pick up trash — and got the first duckling out on her first try.

Afraid the rescued duckling might run right back into the hole it was just saved from, Feyerherm said one spectator took it over to the mother duck. The two gave Westland and her crew a wide berth, but mama duck paced and quacked, waiting for the other two ducklings to get out.

Those ducklings, Westland said, “were much more acrobatic.�

Larimore and Hughes corralled them with brooms and sticks while Westlund tried, unsuccessfully, to use a hat to scoop them up.

“Our biggest drive was to get the ducklings back to their mother as quickly as possible,� Westlund said. “The length of time apart creates more stress than any process used, providing that process doesn’t cause physical damage.�

Feyerherm said she was worried the ducklings would wander through the drainage, but figured the mother’s constant quacking probably kept them in the right spot.

In the end, Westlund was able to get the last two ducklings up with the grabber. The whole rescue took about 15 minutes from when the ducklings first fell in to when they were all reunited with their mother. By the end, a small crowd had gathered to watch the triumphant rescue, which was met with a round of applause.

While the college campus typically sees at least one pair of mallards each spring, Westlund said this is the first time that she can recall ducklings — or anything else — falling down that grate.

She said putting mesh under the grate, in an effort to prevent future falls, “would render it ineffective fairly quickly� as leaves and debris would get caught and clog it.

“If it ever happens again, I’m not worried,� Westland said. “Mama ducks and their ducklings are very vocal. Even if Sarah hadn’t witnessed the event, she, or the next person who came along, would know exactly what was going on.�

This particular duck family “has been held dear by all of the maintenance department,� Westland said. That’s because the mother duck nested in a large planter on campus.

In an effort to stop the mother duck from eating the plant she nested in, Derek Burris, a grounds worker, bought duck food and Westland said people took turns topping off her pile. The department kept tabs on her and her eggs, and the day they hatched “was a proud day for us all,� she said.

“Every spring we usually get a couple pairs of mallard who just nest and have their babies up on campus and everyone gets used to seeing them around,� Feyerherm said. “They’re kind of residents of the campus as far as I can figure.�

Feyerherm said the duckling rescue was “emblematic of what the community does�: springing into action when someone needs help.

“Because none of the ducklings were hurt and we were successful on rescuing them, it’s kind of hard not to see the humor in the description (of what happened),� Westlund said.