After an eagle scared a mother duck away from her ducklings on the Juneau International Airport runway Sunday night, one woman made sure they wouldn\u2019t face the night alone.<\/p>\n
Juneau Police Department dispatcher Kelsey Thompson sat with the five small ducks through the night and kept them safe, according to JPD spokeswoman Erann Kalwara, who wrote about the rescue on social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cDispatchers are first and foremost members of our community and Kelsey\u2019s reaction to the stranded ducklings is just awesome,\u201d Kalwara said.<\/p>\n
When Thompson realized the mother duck wouldn\u2019t return for her babies, she brought them with her to work the next morning, none of which surprised Kalwara, who said Thompson has previous experience raising ducks.<\/p>\n
The ducklings sat with Thompson and other dispatchers until a volunteer from the Juneau Raptor Center could pick them up and take over their care.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ducklings stayed (with Thompson) as she worked 911 calls, radio traffic and requests for service from the public… (she) was dedicated to getting the ducklings help,\u201d Kalwara said.<\/p>\n
JPD\u2019s Facebook posts about the rescue includes pictures of the ducklings in a makeshift nest (cardboard and paper napkins) and the dispatchers cradling the little ducks in their hands.<\/p>\n
Praise for Thompson\u2019s efforts can also be seen on JPD\u2019s page:<\/p>\n
\u201cI (love) JUNEAU! JPD dispatcher girls you rock!\u201d \u2014 Linda Trego<\/p>\n
\u201cGood job! As a former volunteer with JRC … it\u2019s not easy being a duck momma but so worth it.\u201d \u2014 Kathleen Houtz Benner<\/p>\n
\u201cSo cute! Other duties as they present themselves. Lol. Poor momma duck. I bet she\u2019s heart broken.\u201d \u2014 Ann Wilkinson Lind<\/p>\n
The ducks are now in the care of Raptor Center volunteers who were not available for comment. Thompson, after her stint as a duck-sitter, has the day off Tuesday and was also not immediately available for an interview.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After an eagle scared a mother duck away from her ducklings on the Juneau International Airport runway Sunday night, one woman made sure they wouldn\u2019t face the night alone. Juneau Police Department dispatcher Kelsey Thompson sat with the five small ducks through the night and kept them safe, according to JPD spokeswoman Erann Kalwara, who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-24635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24635\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24635"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=24635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}