ROSSVILLE -- It was a happy Mother's day for one mama duck and her babies.

A community in Rossville banded together Sunday morning and helped to rescue eight stranded ducklings that had fallen down a sewer near Bloomingdale Park while crossing the road with their mother.

Felicia Dellaquila was walking her dog when she noticed a duck frantically quacking and flapping its wings near the storm drain at Edgegrove and Lenevar avenues, just outside Bloomingdale Park. Another passerby and her son looked down into the sewer, she said, and saw a family of ducks paddling in the water below.

"We were worried the mother duck was going to get hit by a car," Ms. Dellaquila said.

Neighbors called 911 and 311, but no one would come to help the stranded ducks, Ms. Dellaquila said. Another neighbor, Karen Williams, headed to the nearby firehouse on Drumgoole Road West to ask for help.

Firefighters from Ladder 84 quickly responded to the scene. They used equipment to open the sewer grate, then dropped a net down below and lifted the babies out one by one. The disoriented ducklings flocked to their mother and were returned back to the park they had originally came from.

"They went off happily with their mother," Ms. Dellaquilla said. "I think it was a great thing...the community and everyone coming together to rescue the little babies.

"It's a great Mother's Day story."

Later on in the day, an officer from the city's Animal Care & Control agency arrived on the scene after receiving a call of an additional duckling still stuck in the sewer, said an ACC spokeswoman.

The officer worked together with a few neighborhood kids and created a makeshift net out of a pool stick and some scrap netting, the spokeswoman said. Together, they pulled the duckling safely out of the sewer.