When the ducklings were determined to sit on the motorway, there was one police officer who fit the bill.
Senior Constable Mal Parker was kept on his game yesterday by a brood of baby ducks, which he had to remove twice from the middle of Dunedin's southern motorway on State Highway 1.
Senior Sergeant Brian Benn said the seven ducklings were first reported wandering on the Southern Motorway near Green Island just after midday.
Snr Const Parker was sent to the job and after some apprehension about walking on the busy section of highway with cars whizzing by at 100kmh, managed to herd the ducklings off the road to safety.
But 10 minutes later, the disoriented ducklings were back on the tarmac.
Snr Const Parker was dispatched immediately and, with the aid of Snr Const Ray Stevic, mustered the ducklings off the road again and captured them, keeping them inside his various pockets until SPCA officers arrived with a cage.
The little ducks might have been easily wrangled, but the mother duck, who watched the saga from the relative safety of a nearby ditch, was a whole other challenge, Snr Sgt Benn said, which the constables decided to leave to SPCA officers.
Maartje Hyink later said she and fellow SPCA officer Rachel Van Grunsven tried for more than an hour to catch the mother, but she would not be snared, so the SPCA would take care of the ducklings in her lieu.
Only police officers were allowed to stop traffic to effect animal rescues, she said.
