Tax Lawyer Says He Led 19 Ducklings to Safe Harbor in Lake Michigan
When Frank Hahn encountered 19 ducklings and the mama bird at a downtown Chicago skyscraper on Sunday, the retired tax attorney figured their chance of getting safely through busy city traffic to Lake Michigan was about zero.
So he decided to herd the duck family to its obvious destination, across multiple streets and through a daunting array of obstacles—including a flight of 114 stairs and a number of dogs on leashes who found the avian column of considerable interest. En route, Hahn stopped about six cars and a fire truck making a nonemergency trip. He spent about 35 minutes getting all 19 ducklings and their mother to the waterfront unscathed, he estimates in an e-mail to relatives and friends in the local legal community that made its way to the ABA Journal.
Reached by telephone today, Hahn says he has since gone back and looked for the duck family but hasn’t seen them. However, the marina where he left them has other ducks as well as a lot of foliage, so he believes all is well. “It’s a hospitable area for them,” he says. “Things that they could potentially eat are all over the place.”
But “the scary thing was, I’m looking underneath one of the docks, looking for the ducks, I saw this carp. it must have been 15 inches long, huge,” he recounts. “Here’s my thought … that carp could actually suck up one duck for breakfast or lunch in an instant. Hopefully, they’re not meat-eaters.”
