The tiny ducklings were in a precarious situation – trapped in a sinkhole that formed in a San Clemente parking lot during this week’s storms.
A group of teens saved the ducklings’ day when they stumbled upon the 11 babies, who had been separated from their mom, helplessly stuck and unable to get out of the deep hole.
“This one is hopping away, bro,” Will LePalme, 18, said as he reached in the hole and scooped the babies into his palm to bring them to safety. “Wait, this one is really cute … there’s some more.”
The heart-warming moment when LePalme, 18, his brother Drew, 15, and friend Jake Reisender, 16, saved the ducklings was caught on video, now making its rounds on social media.
“Oh my god,” Reisender’s mom Katie Duvall is heard saying in the video, the birds chirping as they are brought to safety. “Look at them. They’re so scared.”
The boys came across the ducks after a late-evening workout Monday, Feb. 5.
Jake Reisender saw the mother duck hovering around the small, but deep hole that formed in the parking lot near his home, then looked inside to see the ducklings.
The teens worried if they touched the ducklings, the mom might reject them, said Will LePalme.
“Eventually, I just shoved my hand in the hole and grabbed them, because they weren’t getting out anyway,” he said. “They were falling deeper and deeper in the hole so I was like, ‘I’m just going to grab them.’”
Each duckling was only about 3-inches long, likely just weeks old, all with “fluffy feathers,” he said.
After scooping them out of the sinkhole, the ducks started following LePalme.
“I think they would have followed anything, but they followed me, I guess they knew my scent,” he said.
At first, LePalme wanted to take them home and put them in a bathtub for safe keeping. But a friend who works with animal control advised the best course of action was to put them in a box that had an opening so they could be retrieved by their mom.
“The boys were so concerned,” said mom Katie LePalme. “They were so sweet, they were just so nervous about the ducks. They were so helpless.”
When Reisender and his mom checked on the babies the next morning, two ducks, which appeared to be the parents, were lingering nearby.
They moved the box enough for the ducks to get out and then watched from a distance as the family waddled away, the babies following the parents down the street.
Katie LePalme said it was a nice moment during the storms, especially because young kids can get such a bad reputation these days.
“They have good hearts,” she said, “and they just wanted to be good citizens.”
