TAUNTON - Erica Wilson was on her way to work Tuesday morning when she came upon a distraught mother duck whose babies had fallen into a storm drain on Rachel Drive in Taunton.

Wilson knew just what to do. She called her own mother, Elise Wilson, who lives right up the street.

“She saw the mom duck in the road pacing back and forth and quacking loudly. It was almost like she was saying, ‘Help me.’ My daughter realized something was wrong and called me,” said Elise, who lives across the street from Erica on Rachel Drive.

Erica and Elise peered down into the storm drain and saw the reason for the mother duck’s distress – 10 tiny ducklings staring up at them.

But they had no way to rescue the fuzzy fledglings. They were too far down under the grate to reach. So the Wilsons called the police department.

And before long, Taunton Police Officer Stephen Ricketts arrived and hatched a plan. Ricketts asked Elise to fetch her swimming pool skimmer and got to work.

“He was the nicest man. He was very caring and compassionate and very willing to help,” Elise Wilson said.

Ricketts gingerly scooped out the babies one by one. As they popped out of the net,

their mother called to them and they ran to her quacking, Elise said.

But before he’d gotten them all out, the commotion scared the remaining ducklings and they scattered in the drainage system.

Meanwhile, firefighters, another police officer and animal control arrived, Elise said.

And everyone was on a mission not to leave any ducklings behind.

That meant removing manhole covers, crawling in and flushing them out with a hose, Elise said.

“It took them over an hour. But they were determined to save all these babies,” Elise said.

And they did it. They found all 10 ducklings, all safe and sound.

It was quite a triumphant moment when the final duckling made his appearance, Elise said.

Everyone had been pulling for the little guys who’d stumbled into the drain.

“It was a team effort,” said Elise, who works as a personnel coordinator for Shaw’s supermarkets.

Those are exactly the kind of people she’d want to respond when human beings are in danger or trouble as well, she said.

And she was a proud mother herself, touched by how much compassion her daughter Erica demonstrated. It would have been easier to just keep driving when she came across the mother duck but instead Erica stopped to help and stayed to the end, Elise said.

Elise couldn’t help but think of the heartbreaking story of the motorist on Route 24 in Acushnet who threw a bag full of five kittens out the window into traffic earlier this month. Only one survived, a plucky little fellow dubbed Freeway.

The compassion she witnessed Tuesday is the antidote to that kind of cruelty, Elise said.

The ducklings were so tiny, Elise guessed they each weighed just a few ounces. You could easily hold them in the palm of your hand, she said.

When the last duckling was reunited with its mother, they lined up behind her and walked off into the woods together – the mother once again calm and unruffled.

With no ducklings left behind.