Police help freeway-crossing ducks

MILPITAS, Calif., April 18 (UPI) -- The California Highway Patrol says it came to the rescue of some wild ducks trying to cross a freeway near San Francisco.

The San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News said the ducks were headed southbound on the center divider of Interstate 880 near Milpitas Saturday when CHP Officer Ryan Nelson, a relative rookie, came on the scene in his patrol car.

Nine ducklings were with their mother. When veteran CHP Officer Lawrence Colon spied Nelson trying to herd the ducks between speeding cars, he brought traffic on one of the Bay Area's busiest freeways to a halt.

Drivers rolled their windows down and began to applaud, the newspaper said.

"Everyone loved it," Nelson told the newspaper. "All these hundreds of cars were stopped, and all these little chicks go walking by."

"I was like, man, they're going to get tired and not make it," Colon told the newspaper. "But they did."

The News said just an hour and a half later, Nelson was dispatched to state Highway 237, where a driver had stopped to help yet another line of ducklings.

"He was just standing by the ducks when I got there," Colon told the newspaper. "He didn't want them going on the roadway because he almost had a traffic collision there. So we did the same thing as before. He walked them along the shoulder, and that was it. It's pretty easy once you learn how to do it."