Railroad Worker Saves Trapped Duckings From Train Tracks

A mother would never intentionally lead her babies into danger, however, while leading her new family across a train track in New Zealand, one mother duck nearly got her family killed when she misjudged how small her babies really were.

While the mother could easily step over the metal rails, her babies were unfortunately too small to jump over and were left stranded in between the tracks. Thankfully, railroad workers James Fox and Ryan Milligan spotted the trapped babies and quickly came to their rescue before it was too late.

“At scheduled times throughout the day we had to pack up our gear, hop into the rail truck and get to the nearby crossing to leave the track to let trains pass,” Fox explained. “On one of these we occasions we came across the ducklings from inside the rail truck. The ducklings were too little jump out from between the rails. It seems that mother had led them into a bit of a trap.”

“The ducklings would have had maybe five minutes until the train was due to cross,” Fox said. “We had to round them up a bit since they were intent on running away from us, but it only took just a couple of minutes.”

Within a few minutes, the two men had gathered the six ducklings and helped them up over the rail with enough time to take a few photos of the adorable rescue. “We could only hear her on the nearby farmland, quacking nervously,” Fox said. “We are confident the ducklings were reunited with her when they ran off.”