By Mark Hansel
NKyTribune managing editor
The Boone County Animal Shelter assists with a lot of animal rescues, but it’s not often that the creatures come to them.
That’s just what happened a few weeks ago, however, when some observant employees noticed a rather agitated bird on the roof of the shelter building.
Emily Rowekamp, the Shelter’s volunteer manager/rescue coordinator, said the adult killdeer had been chirping loudly for a couple of days, but nobody knew why.
“A number of us had seen her and made comments about how she was making a lot of noise and had been out there for a day or so,” Rowekamp said.
As the staff was preparing to leave the shelter for the evening on Saturday, June 4, vet techs Suzanne Ditto and Laurie Delaney made note of how much noise the bird was making. Ditto wondered whether she was a mother bird with babies nearby.
The two began listening and heard the sound of babies chirping from a storm drain.
“They said, ‘we can’t just leave them here,’ because it was supposed to rain that night,” Rowekamp said. “It was a big metal drainpipe, and we were trying to pull it off, but we couldn’t get it.”
As luck would have it, a Boone County Parks Department employee was driving by and retrieved a saw that would cut through metal.
“It took about 20 minutes for us to get it off,” Rowekamp said. “They reached down there and pulled the babies out. They were sopping wet and very cold, but they seemed in pretty good shape, other than that.”
The staff searched for information on the killdeer, which is a type of plover, to find out what type of nest to make for the birds.
“They typically make their nests on rocks, so we got some warm rocks off of the roof,” Rowekamp said. “We made them a little nest out front and we just kind of hung out and waited to see if the mom came back and, sure enough, she did. By the time we were leaving one of them was hopping around with her.”
The Boone County Animal Shelter is located on Idlewild Road in Burlington, near the Fairgrounds.
Delaney, who lives nearby, came by to check on them while walking her dogs that evening. Mother and babies were doing well and, by that time, another adult killdeer, had joined them.
The Shelter staff usually leaves at about 4:30 p.m. on Saturdays, but as fate would have it, they stayed late that night. It was about 6:00 p.m. when they left and it was quiet enough for them to hear the babies.
Later that night, there were heavy downpours in the area that would have made it nearly impossible for the baby killdeer to survive if they were still trapped in the drainpipe.
“The whole thing was almost like a Disney movie,” Delany said. “She would look at us, and look at the pipe, then she would look at us again.”
Boone County Animal Shelter Beckey Reiter, said the community response to the rescue story which was shared on the Shelter Facebook page, has been overwhelming. She said it demonstrates the connection the shelter staff has to the people of the region.
“My crew is great,” Reiter said. “They are forever mindful of the importance of sharing with our community.”
Mother and babies are still doing well and have relocated to a less-heavily traveled spot near the shelter.
Emily Rowekamp of the Boone County Animal Shelter contributed to this story.
Contact Mark Hansel at mark.hansel@nkytrib.com