Westport patrolman Doug Wenson’s ears perked up late Thursday afternoon when he heard a call come in from a Good Samaritan who had noticed the sound of ducklings quacking from a John Reed Road storm drain — it sounded familiar to him.

Two days earlier, an officer and members of the fire department were dispatched to that same storm drain after someone reported ducks stuck inside — “I assumed everyone was good to go,” he said.

But they weren’t. On Thursday, beach commission chairman Sean Leach, who is always down around the beaches this time of year, placed the second call, and Wenson and several other officers went down to have a look.

“I met (Leach) over there,” Wenson said. “We were able to pull up one of the storm drains and we got one our two out. Then we realized the drain connected to another manhole cover up the road.”

Fire department crews were called in, and department members pulled up the other manhole and “pushed air through it” to direct the ducklings to a spot where they could be accessed. They didn’t know how many were in the hole.

When the ducklings finally started appearing, “we just kept scooping them up one at a time with a net,” Wenson said. “We got the first, then the second. We thought, ‘There can’t be many more,’ but there were 10!”

The lucky ducklings were placed in a five gallon bucket, while mother duck watched from the woods off the side of the road. By quarter to 8, Wenson had to leave but a police supervisor stayed with the fire department to see it through.

“I’ve been here 11 years,” Wenson said of his time on the force. “I’ve pushed some turtles out of the road and done some other stuff. But nothing like this. It was satisfying and we were all happy to have it work out.”

Fire department chief Daniel Baldwin said Monday that all ducklings were checked out by the animal control officer, given a clean bill of health and released back into the wild.