Incredible video captured by Minnesota Department of Transportation’s traffic cameras shows a family of ducks crossing a busy highway during rush hour Wednesday.
As the mother duck leads her troupe of ducklings into the speeding traffic, a number of cars swerve, slow down or slam on their brakes to avoid the birds.
At several moments, it looks like the ducks aren’t going to make it.
Amazingly, the ducks escaped unscathed, as did the several motorists involved.
The department’s communications director Kevin Gutknecht said he had never seen anything like it and is unsure how the ducks ended up on the highway.
“My experience with ducks is that a duck hen will lay her eggs in one place, and as soon as they hatch, she’ll lead them immediately towards water,” Gutknecht told Global News. “But I don’t think we know how they got there.”
The department jokingly posted on their Facebook page that the ducklings had violated several state laws and that their traffic safety engineers would like a word with them.
Although the post was written in jest, Ontario police say that stopping on highways to help ducks cross is a hazard. And a Montreal woman was convicted on two counts of criminal negligence causing death and two counts of dangerous driving causing death for stopping her car to rescue ducklings from the side of a highway in 2010.
“I don’t think there is a law against helping creatures, but there are laws on impeding traffic unnecessarily,” said Gutknecht of Minnesota’s statutes, adding that he has not heard of any instance where ducks crossing the road have caused injury in the state.
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