A duckling was rescued from a drain by residents, a vet from a surgery nearby and a UPS man in North Kingston last month.

The stranded baby duck had been walking on King's Rad with its mother and nine siblings when it fell into a drain and was sadly left behind.

Dan Heffernan, a vet at the nearby Medivet surgery , was called to action by another vet who alerted him to the situation.

"She came back and said, you're not going to believe this, but a baby duck is apparently stuck in a drain outside the practice and we're going to see if we can get it out," he recalled.

"They were walking down the road, no one know where they came from. You could hear it sort of squeaking from down below.

"There were some residents out there as well, and someone had put out a hammer to try to remove the top of the drain. The duckling was swimming around."

Leanne Cook, a resident who has been living in Kingston for 34 years, informed the vets of the trapped duckling after she noticed the family of ducks on her walk that day.

Leanne, a Dental Practice receptionist, said: "There was a lot of traffic and I noticed that there was a Mum with her ducklings, and they sort of came towards me.

"I didn't know where they'd come from and I thought, I can't just leave them.

"So I started following them down one of the side-roads. I kept walking behind them, and I thought I could get them to some water or something."

They soon led Leanne unwittingly into a neighbour's back garden, causing her some concern.

She said: "I didn't want to go into this garden, and then a UPS driver just pulled up, so he got them out [of the garden].

"I carried on walking with them because they weren't going to stop, and we crossed the little road."

The neighbour whose garden the ducks had got into joined Leanne on the walk behind the family of ducks, when the pair spotted the disappearance of the tenth duckling outside the Medivet on King's Road.

"All of a sudden, I thought, oh, there's only nine ducklings – one of them has gone!" Leanne said.

"I tried to get the Mum to stop, but she wasn't having any of that.

"I could hear cheeping, and it was down a drain. So, I tried to get the drain out, obviously I couldn't, so I ran to the vet and knocked on the door."

It was at this point that Dr Heffenan was called.

A crowd of people, many of whom were customers at a neighbouring coffee shop, gathered to help Leanne and Dr. Heffernan with the rescue.

Dr. Heffernan said: "There was a little pipe next to the area where it was swimming and it kept kind of moving into the pipes.

"I was a bit concerned it was going to go somewhere that we weren't going to be able to get it.

"I improvised a little bit and grabbed my arm and a big bag and put a latex glove on and managed to get the little duckling out, and we put it in a car.

"The happy ending is that someone manage to take the duckling in the car back to its family and they were escorted to a part of a pond down the road."

Asked whether these incidents are unusual, Dr. Dan Heffernan said: "We do get wildlife in quite a bit, but very rarely ducks and ducklings.

"We never had an incident like this, so it was quite wonderful."

Leanne said: "I have never experienced that before, but that was my good deed for the day.

"I always like to do a good deed every day, and that's all I want for that day".

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