It’s hard to be a duckling in a world full of sewer grates. Every year there seems to be another viral video of a dramatic rescue. This year is no different.

Tiny webbed feet and peanut-sized brains mean that baby ducklings don’t quite understand what they can and can’t walk across.

And those ducky moms can be caring for a dozen babies at a time, so they can’t always herd the whole group at once.

Just last week, The Dodo posted the latest dramatic rescue video of a group of ducklings.

It all started when a woman stopped to say hello to a little feathered family only to realize that a few of the ducklings were missing.

Then, she heard little quacks coming from a nearby sewer grate.

Realizing the rest of the ducklings were trapped in there, our good samaritan pondered what exactly she could do to help.

No one could get a hand in there to help the babies out, so two women banded together to try to lift off the grate – that’s heavy work!

But with a careful tug and some teamwork, they managed to remove it and place it safely on the ground nearby.

In the meantime, a neighbor called city workers in to help rescue the ducklings – but even before they arrived the scene drew quite a crowd from within the neighborhood.

But the women didn’t wait for city workers to show up to go in for the rescue.

The hole is quite deep and has two pipes that take the water away. There appear to be quite a few ducklings down there, some of them already hiding in the pipes.

They’re milling around, not quite sure what to do.

But it’s our original good samaritan to the rescue. She goes in for the save with a creative rescue tool – a pair of kitchen tongs!

Her arms simply aren’t long enough to reach in and grab the ducklings, so she had to find a safe way to extend her reach.

And you can see just how far down she had to reach in this photo – she’s more than halfway in!

After rescuing three ducklings with the tongs, there appear to be more tiny quacks coming from inside the pipes. The ducklings are hiding and that made it much harder to stage their rescue.

But it does appear the tongs worked as the first rescuees were lifted out and into the hands of someone helping nearby.

But there’s no way to reach the hiding babies, so someone grabs a net from their garage.

Unfortunately, that only scared the ducklings farther into the pipe.

Now there’s nothing left to do but send a human in there.

Luckily, it appears the city workers have arrived in time to undertake that duty!

And here’s where things get really creative. The workers on the scene open another grate and plan to connect a hose to the nearest hydrant so they can flush the ducklings out of the pipes and into a place where they can be snatched up and rescued.

Alas, it looks like a little time was all that was needed to get them to come back to the place where they last saw their siblings and the woman (named Mindy) with the tongs is waiting patiently to lift them to safety.

The absurdity of it all strikes the group as they burst out laughing at the same time. But a fourth duckling comes out and Mindy is going in for more!

Make sure you scroll down below to see more of the heroic rescue and find out just how many ducklings were saved that day.

We couldn’t help but get a little choked up watching the reunion at the end! No wonder the video has over 4 million views in less than a week!

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Source: The Dodo via Facebook, Ducks Unlimited