Overland Park Parks and Animal Control workers spent several hours Friday afternoon rescuing a troop of ducklings that had gotten into some trouble during a swim lesson at South Lake Park.
What happened: A total of 11 of the fluffy little creatures accidentally swam into an overflow spillway in the park’s lake, basically a 20-foot hole.
“The spillway has a kind of gate cover so that obviously no one can fall in there, but the ducks were able to swim through there,” said Mike Burton, Overland Park parks project coordinator.
The rescue: A woman walking around South Lake saw two of the ducklings drop into the spillway and called animal control services for help, Animal Control officer Jessica Cantrell said.
Once on scene, Cantrell said she and another officer then called Parks and Recreation for help to get the ducklings out.
Burton, along with park maintenance supervisor Brett Maasen, then took a maintenance boat out to the scene to help retrieve the baby ducks.
“We opened the spillway and [Maasen] actually went down into the cavern of sorts and put each duckling individually into a net that we lowered down,” Burton said.
Within two to three hours, he said, each of the ducklings was out and safely returned unharmed to their mother who had been supervising the rescue mission from a distance the entire time, according to Cantrell.
The aftermath: After the incident, Overland Park took to Facebook the next day to post about the tale.
“They’re now off to tell their parents about their exciting Friday, and thanks to staff, they’ll all live happily ever after,” the post reads.
