Spring is the time when ducks lay their eggs, and by the end of the season, the eggs are hatching and little ducklings are being born. At the beginning of their lives, the ducklings are so small that they are completely reliant on their mother’s care, and she certainly has her hands full protecting them.

Since male ducks are often aggressive, the mother duck’s first priority is finding a place to keep her ducklings safe away from the male-filled lakes or ponds. Once she has done that, her ducklings’ lives are still at risk from predators who want to eat them, so she has to be on the lookout for things like snakes, raccoons, foxes, eagles— and, as this story shows, sewer grates.

A man was recently on a walk when a mother duck frantically tried to get his attention.

“I was going for a walk the other day, and I noticed a duck was quacking at me,” the man said in the viral YouTube video he made about the incident.

The man realized that the duck was trying to get his attention, so he walked towards her. It was only then that he heard the chirps…When he looked inside the sewer grate, he saw that little ducklings had fallen inside and were now trapped. Their mother had no way to save them, so she enlisted the help of the first human she saw.

“I called for help,” he recounted.

The man called the Phoenix Fire Department, who rushed to the scene to do whatever they could to save the ducklings. The Rutgers Wildlife Conservation and Management Program said it is common for baby ducklings to fall into sewer grates like this one.

“It is quite common for ducklings to fall through the opening of sewer grates,” the website explained. “A mother duck can walk across the grate without a problem, and she may not recognize the inherent danger of leading her offspring across it.”

The firefighters took their time prying the gate open.

Once they were inside, they put ladder down the hole and used flashlights to make sure the area was free of snakes.

“Meanwhile, the mother duck was flying in circles above us,” the man said.

Finally, a firefighter got in the sewer and went about rescuing the ducklings.

There ended up being nine ducklings in total, and all of them were rescued! The firefighters placed them in a cooler filled with leaves as they rescued them.

Meanwhile, the mother kept watch in a neighbor’s yard. When the firefighters finally released the ducklings, they ran right for their mother!

We applaud this Good Samaritan for taking the time to help a family of ducklings in need! Check out the rescue in the video below, and SHARE this story so your friends and family can see this as well!