Myesha Martinez was leaving the LA Fitness near Route 440 in Bayonne at 10:45 a.m. Wednesday when she saw a duck in the middle of road holding up traffic. Her eyes then turned to a storm drain on Goldsborough Drive, where a duckling had just taken the plunge into the sewer.
Maybe they were looking for water.
It wasn’t just a single duckling that fell in, however. Martinez quickly learned that one bad duckling idea turned into another and now 10 of them were in the sewer, likely condemned to a slow death. All while momma duck looked on helplessly from above.
“I immediately sat on the floor, looked at the ducks and was like, ‘OK, I have to get these ducks out,’ ” Martinez said in an interview.
The fuzzy black and yellows ducklings are seen in videos filmed by Martinez walking around in the drain or swimming in a small puddle inside as the light shines through the grate. The mother duck, meanwhile, quacks at her brood through the grate.
After many back-and-forth calls, Bayonne police and firefighters arrived, with the firefighters opening the grate to the sight of the ducklings huddling up in the puddle. Nine of the ducklings were scooped up by hand, put into Martinez’s tote bag and returned to the mother duck.
“It was really beautiful,” Martinez said, who added that as a mother of a 4-year-old, her “mommy instincts” kicked in when she saw the ducklings trapped. “I’m just really happy it all worked out.”
The last of the brood found an escape hatch in the sewer and made its way to a storm drain on the other side of the road before it was rescued. Martinez then got the chance to deliver the last duckling to its mother.
Junior Ferrante, the Bayonne OEM coordinator, credited the “great” Bayonne Fire Department for its efforts. He noted that similar situations with ducklings happen “quite open” in the area because of the nearby waterway leading to the New York Bay.
“Our fire department (has) become quite adept at trying to rescue them ... as best we can and get them reunited with mom,” Ferrante said.
Bayonne Deputy Fire Chief Bill Bartos added that the fire department “ensures the safety of all the city residents, including animals. We’re always there to help animals in need.”
