April showers bring May copaganda
April is here, and don’t get me wrong, I love April. It’s just that my heart is in May. Both my girlfriend’s and best friend’s birthdays are in May. And then there’s Mother’s Day. And the warmer weather, with all the blossoming flowers.
But what I most look forward to is the blooming of one particular piece of police propaganda. I am, of course, talking about The Saving of the Ducklings from a Storm Drain!
If you’re unfamiliar, every May, Maine media decides to report on a different local police department rescuing ducklings from a storm grate. Which day? Which police department? How many ducklings? Who knows? It’s so fun to guess!
This year it probably won’t be Cape Elizabeth, because on May 5 of last year, TV station WGME reported:
A police officer along with help from Cape Elizabeth Public Works Department saved eight ducklings who were trapped in a storm drain.
Police say a concerned citizen was out walking on Sunday in Cape Elizabeth when he came across a mother and father duck quacking fiercely into a storm drain. The concerned citizen discovered that eight ducklings were trapped inside in the storm drain.
Officer Darin Estes was called and with the help of Cape Elizabeth Public Works Department, they were able to remove the storm drain grate and rescue the ducklings.
Police say the ducklings were reunited with their parents and waddled away like nothing happened.
How cute! Eight! Wow! It’s not exactly responsible journalism to just uncritically publish police claims, but still! Incredible! The CEPD called it “an unusual, but warranted call,” but I’m sure it only seemed unusual because they missed the local FOX station’s reporting on May 16, 2024:
The Gorham Police Department says officers rescued a family of ducklings from a storm drain Monday. Police had received a report that a mother duck was causing a traffic issue on New Portland Road in Gorham.
Officers followed the sound of nearby ducklings and found them trapped in a storm drain. With help from the fire department, the ducklings were rescued and safely returned to their mother.
Yay!
On the very same day a year earlier, in 2023, WBAI reported:
Several officers jumped into action and into a sewer to rescue a few fuzzy ducklings for Mother’s Day.
The Rockland Police Department posted body camera footage of the rescue.
Sgt. Dun Duhamel and Officer Logan Finnegan got the call to help 10 ducklings who had fallen through a sewer grate Sunday.
Finnegan climbed into the sewer, where several feet of water were waiting for him. From there, he was able to get all 10 ducklings to Duhamel, then reunite the ducklings with their mother.
Again, uncritically publishing police claims feels a little fashy, but it’s sure a lot easier when there’s video! Wonderful!
On May 11, 2022, Portland station WMTW reported:
Scarborough Police Department were called to the area of Route 1 in Scarborough, spotting a man lying on the side of the road looking down a storm drain.
The man had noticed a mother duck with several of her ducklings walking, while the other eight ducklings fell into the drain and were chirping for help.
Officers and an employee from the Public Works Department, Dan Desimio, were able to rescue all eight of the ducklings.
This heartwarming copaganda is not exclusive to our state. In fact, if you Google “police rescue ducklings” and the names of your favorite states, you can find stories from all over the country going back a very long time! Like back in 2006, when the Associated Press reported:
It wasn’t chickens that were crossing the road. It was a mother duck and 10 ducklings and the road was I-15, starting a lengthy rescue that ended happily.
Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Chris Simmons slowed traffic and herded the ducks, which were waddling south in the northbound lane, to the grassy median after getting the call Friday. But five of the ducklings slipped through a storm grate and Davis County Animal Control officers joined the rescue.
Officers Ashley Langford and Brandie Stanley used tongs to get two of the ducklings out, but the other three headed deep inside the pipe that runs under I-15.
They duct-taped a small net to the tongs and then waited for more than two hours before each little duckling eventually wandered from the pipe within reach of the net.
The baby ducks were placed in a pet carrier, and the mother was in a separate crate as they were taken to a new home — away from the highway — at Layton Commons Park.
“We released the baby ducks first, then their mom. They all dashed to the pond. It was a great reunion,” Langford said.
Now, sure, this may seem like a decades-long local, state and national conspiracy, but it’s probably nothing more than an absolutely irrational coincidence on a completely impossible scale.
Anyway, who you got this year?
Samuel James also writes “Banned Histories of Race in America” at samuelj.substack.com.
