Neighbors rescue baby birds from drain

In our big world, it wasn’t much of a crisis or much of a rescue, which probably means it isn’t much of a story. But a handful of Murietans helped rescue a bunch of baby quail from a storm sewer late Monday afternoon.

Travis Abshire was running on Puerto Drive around 4:30 p.m. when he saw an adult quail zig-zagging frantically in front of the drain. Then Abshire heard peeps from inside the drain. There were baby quail in there, 10 of them, it turned out.

One of the baby quail after being pulled from the drain. (Photo by Caryl Abshire. Click photos for larger images.)

He ran home, around the corner, and let his mother, Caryl, know. She called Security, hoping for help. “They gave me a 209 (area code) number to call,” she said later in frustration.

They returned and pulled the grate from the drain. As they stood puzzling over what to do, neighbors joined in. Two brought pool skimmers. They proved to be the key. With one skimmer herding the little ones and one skimmer corralling them – first two or three at a time, then singly – the birds were brought back up to the street.

They were put in a nearby bush, where their mother was calling. The neighbors returned to their lives. “We couldn’t just let 10 little birds die,” Caryl Abshire said.

After the quail were rescued, one neighbor covered the storm drain for now.