Raw video: Officer stops traffic for duckling crossing (across busy highway)

[catgirl]

Lakewood Police Officer Dustin Carrell stopped traffic on westbound SR-512 Monday morning near I-5 to help a mother duck and her ducklings safely cross the road.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c1c_1209428470&p=1

[piedmont]

1. I stopped to let a pair of geese take their goslings across yesterday.

Lots of fun to watch.

[madokie]

2. well bless his heart

Rec

[malaise]

3. That's so sweet

K & R

[niyad]

4. there was a small community downriver from detroit that, years ago at least,

had official duck crossings on the bridges, etc (it is pretty much an island, so lots of water, boats, bridges, etc) one could actually get a ticket for not obeying the signs. used to amuse the hell out of me to watch traffic being held up so ducks could stroll across the bridges, etc. I think it amused the ducks not to bother with the canals, but to hold up the humans.

[ceile]

5. Very sweet. n/t

[DS1]

6. That's sweet, but he's gonna catch so much shit for the from the other guys

back at the station

[keep_it_real]

7. Wow, what a very nice and humane thing to do

[DRoseDARs]

8. I love how the Nissan behind him stepped up and helped out by blocking the next lane. n/t

[BonnieJW]

9. THAT was fabulous!

The best thing I've seen all week.

[Tracer]

10. A couple of years ago ...

... I was driving on a 4-lane highway and about a half a mile ahead, cars started swerving all over the road. I was puzzled as to why they were --- until I got there and started swerving too!

Same story. An apparently suicidal mother duck was leading her ducklings across the northbound lanes and was headed straight for the southbound ones. She made it across my side, and I didnt' see, but hope she made it across the other side.

[sammythecat]

11. Now there is a good man, and a good cop too, I'll bet.

I wonder if he could have gotten in a lot of trouble for doing that. Especially if there'd been an accident, but, thankfully, all ended well.

Thanks for that. It made my day. It's always good to see stuff like that. Sometimes it doesn't seem so, but there are a lot of good people in the world.

[catgirl]

12. He may have actually prevented an accident

Some people react by slamming on brakes or swerving. It did look dangerous either way.
Maybe someone called 911 to report it. I'm glad they made it across safely, thanks to
the nice cop.

[sammythecat]

13. You're right. I didn't consider that and I'm glad you mentioned it.

Makes it even better. :thumbsup:

[Lorien]

53. Two cops stopped traffic along busy 192 in Kissimmee (near Disney)

to allow a huge gopher tortoise (extremely large and endangered animals) to cross the highway. If anyone had hit it not only would it have killed the tortoise, but probably done some serious damage to the vehicle, and possibly the driver as well!

[Dr Fate]

16. Nothing beats a cool cop- sometimes hard to find. n/t

n/t

[sammythecat]

20. I agree. Just as a bad cop is despicable, a cool cop is heroic.

A good man (or woman) who takes on the duties of police work is a hero in my book.

[roguevalley]

21. I doubt that he did. Cops do this all the time. Up here, in Anchorage,

we have flats filled with geese and ducks and they are always wandering around where they don't belong. Everyone helps them.

[sammythecat]

32. That's good to hear. I was picturing his captain giving him

holy hell for stopping traffic like that. Catgirl brought up a good point that what he did might have been safer than having cars swerving all over the place trying to avoid hitting them. That made good sense to me.

Sometimes I get disgusted with people, and then I see things like this and I realize we're not all so bad and there's lots of cool people among us. Cops have been getting a lot of ugly publicity lately and that's another reason this was good to see.

[CatWoman]

14. that's so CUTE!!!!

:loveya:

[Gormy Cuss]

15. Make Way for Ducklings!

[kath]

28. One of the best kids' books ever! Some interesting info on how McCloskey was able to do such

great drawings of the ducks:
His second and perhaps best-known book, Make Way for Ducklings, won the prestigious Caldecott Medal in 1942. In the story, a mother duck searches the streets of Boston for a safe place to raise her young. McCloskey began the book by recalling the hilarious scenes of ducks crossing grid-locked Boston streets. To illustrate the detailed movements of his characters with authenticity, McCloskey bought a half dozen southern mallards at a city market from a poultry dealer. He spent the next few weeks crawling around his studio, sketching the ducks and cleaning up their droppings. McCloskey put them in a bathtub to sketch their swimming movements. And when they waddled too fast for him to draw, McCloskey fed the ducks red wine to slow them down. Evident from the richly detailed charcoal illustrations, McCloskey returned to Boson to sketch the book’s background alive with parks, bridges, fences, streets, people and cars.

http://www.ohioana-authors.org/mccloskey/highlights.php

[Gormy Cuss]

31. I read it and his Maine books,

"Blueberries for Sal" and "One Morning in Maine." I was charmed when Boston installed the sculptures in the Public Garden and would smile every time I walked by. Even many decades later it was still possible to see what McCloskey depicted because it's an old neighborhood and it's slow to change.

Red wine and ducks is good in cooking --I'm not so sure about feeding it to them!

[flvegan]

17. May this act of kindness help his career.

We could use more folks like this acting as an example.

[Crabby Appleton]

18. good cop. nt

[KansDem]

19. Much, much more humane treatment than the poor duck in one of the other videos...

Poor duck.....

Some asshole placed a duckling on a loud speaker than proceeded to play music loud.

FUCK YOU! :grr:

[Xithras]

45. Liveleak is not a site for animal lovers. Or people lovers for that matter.

It's well known as the home of some of the most brutal videos on the Internet. Back in the day, it was known as ogrish.com and was the home of snuff videos. They changed their name and banned videos that actually showed the details of peoples deaths in an attempt to go mainstream (if you can see blood AND the person died, it's not allowed). Everything else is fair game. Jihad groups actually post videos of IED detonations to that site.

It's a site that will sap your faith in the goodness of humanity.

[KansDem]

46. Thanks for the explanation. I didn't know this...

:(

[Xithras]

47. It's still one of the four biggies, and it gets a lot of media attention.

The top 4 online video sites are basically YouTube & Google (mainstream videos and vblogs where anything objectionable will be censored), Liveleak (which focuses on "events" videos and has no serious content restrictions), and Break.com (which is the grandaddy of stupid prank sites...think amateur Jackass videos all day long). There are dozens more, but they're all basically knockoffs of these 4. You could even argue that it's these THREE, since Google Video is arguably a YouTube knockoff itself.

[hootinholler]

22. How the hell did they get out there?

There's a Jersey rail.

It was the right thing to do from a traffic safety point of view.

:shrug:

-Hoot

[Jed Dilligan]

23. Good for him, but a functioning wildlife corridor would be

less expensive and disruptive. Just sayin'. Town where I used to live was endlessly mocked as eco-freako for installing toad tunnels under the freeway.

[seabeyond]

24. let my kids watch this one. so they could see some nice. they see so much abusive

power and control from cop. good for them to see this.

thanks for sharing

[Stinky The Clown]

25. This is nice to see after that story about that asshole cop in NC kicking his dog.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3228156

[liberal N proud]

26. I have seen I-90 in Ohio stopped for Canadian Geese

[Canuckistanian]

27. Well, they stop traffic to allow Bush to travel unimpeded thru city streets

It's the decent thing to do to allow dumb animals to travel without being inconvenienced by us intellectually superior beings.

[Cerridwen]

29. K & R

feel good stories are needed these days.

Kicking.

[galledgoblin]

30. *applauds* (n/t)

[VotesForWomen]

33. 'bout time they did something useful. nt

[drmeow]

34. OMG that was f**king adorable!

[Adams Wulff]

35. Very cool!

I bet he got a lot of job satisfaction that day!

[Laverdadtelibrara]

36. What will the world come to next???????????

[BlueCollar]

37. K&R..n/t

[and-justice-for-all]

38. Well whata guy!! good for him...

:applause::applause::applause::applause:

[On the Road]

39. Just Like I Remember from a Book Long, Long Ago:

[MorningGlow]

40. Awww! Sweet

Nice to see some good news for a change.

We have lots of ducks and geese around a local mall that has ponds on the outer edges of the parking lot, but there are four-lane roads on three sides of the mall and a highway to the south. LOTS of dead stops to let families of floofies cross--we've come to expect it around there.

[Echo In Light]

41. K&R

[baby_mouse]

42. Why can't they all be like HIM?

Also, why can't good apples cure the barrel?

[lonestarnot]

43. Quack Quack!

:applause:

[Xithras]

44. Not to be a cynic, but I just have to make a point....

Highway patrol officers do this sort of thing fairly regularly across the U.S., herding everything from dogs, to ducks, to cows off the roadway. They don't do it for the benefit of wildlife, but to keep the highways safe and clear. People have a nasty tendency to hit their brakes and swerve to avoid animals on the roadway which can cause major accidents (a childhood friend of mine is a parapalegic today because she swerved her car off the roadway to avoid a squirrel and slammed into a tree when she was only 16). In most states, the police will run interference to get animals off the roadways as quickly as possible to prevent them from causing accidents.

Yeah, it's cuter to think about the brave officer stopping traffic to help the mama duck and out of respect for the natural world, but I'm just sayin...

[FourScore]

48. Oh I'm smiling now!!! I LOVE IT!!!

Thank you so much for posting that!

[JNelson6563]

49. Thanks for posting! Love it!

Here in northern MI, lakes everywhere, we get a lot of this. We're rather seasoned at stopping traffic ourselves to help the mama and babies cross the road. A far cry from that massive highway in the video. It's one of those rare moments when you get to see real beauty in fellow humans you do not know.

IMO this cop is a hero and a fine example. I'd wager there was more than one driver who cheered him once they realized what he was doing. :toast:

Julie

[NashVegas]

50. When I Lived in VT, I Used to Have to Stop For Geese, Goats, & Sheep All the Time

It's good for humans to be forced to put our arrogant, harried lives in perspective with the rest of the world every now and then.

[caligirl]

51. noticed the assist of some good citizens as well stopping traffic .

[Kat45]

52. A couple of geese crossed the street in front of my car when I was going to work.

It was so cute, and the best part was that they were crossing in the crosswalk! The woman in the next car and I were cracking up laughing about it. :-)

There's a flock of Canada geese who hang out by the river along a street I take to work, so I'm bound to see more cases of geese crossing the road, and most likely more than just two geese next time.

[Quantess]

54. Wow! I drive through that stretch of I-5 a lot.

There is nearly ALWAYS congestion through Lakewood, WA (just south of Tacoma). There are daily traffic accidents along that stretch, for inexplicable reasons, except numbskull bad drivers.

I saw the video, and I have to say, the cop helped avoid a traffic accident. Those ducks WOULD have caused a traffic accident, I am certain.

[Liberal_in_LA]

55. This story was so cute, I'm gonna bump it!

[zanne]

56. I stopped for turkeys a few weeks ago.

They're definitely not as cute.

[SeattleGirl]

57. That video is great!

:bounce: :bounce:

[Cerridwen]

58. Kick. n/t