Today's Fluff Courtesy The Portland Police Bureau
It's no tranquilized bear falling out of a tree, but this Mayberryesque report of a duck family rescue comes via the Portland Police Bureau's Facebook page.
Gold star for correct usage of the word "badling":
In the late afternoon hours of Monday May 14, 2012, two Portland Police officers responded to a call of some wayward ducks ambling along the median of the northbound McLoughlin viaduct, North of Southeast Holgate Boulevard. The officers arrived and spotted a mother duck several ducklings walking along the center median of the viaduct as traffic moved swiftly by.
The veteran officers, knowing that attempting to get out on foot and catch the mother duck and ducklings would prove futile, slowed traffic by using their rear emergency lights and gave the ducks a police escort along the viaduct as traffic slowed and passed the parade on the right.
It's hard to photograph a badling while driving.
On one occasion, two ducklings fell through a storm drain and the officers stopped to lift the drain and retrieve the young birds, putting them back in the march with the others.
As the badling of ducks wandered off oft the viaduct near Southeast Harrison Street, the officers got out of their cars to herd them to the West towards Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and eventually the Willamette River. As one officer blocked traffic on MLK, the other officer escorted them on foot across the street and into a parking lot, out of harms way. The officers then continued to follow them until the mother duck and her ducklings made their way through a hole in a fence and down to the rivers edge.
Photos courtesy of the Portland Police Bureau.
