People walk in to police stations for all kinds of reasons — to file a report, to ask an officer a question or maybe to check on a case. At 11 a.m. Wednesday, someone walked into a Montgomery County police station in Olney, Md., with an unusual request for help: A duck was walking on a sidewalk atop a storm drain for about an hour, making a distress noise that sounded like crying.

Officer H. Chen was at the station doing paperwork when he heard the report about the duck. Chen, who asked The Washington Post to withhold his first name because he was concerned about possible harassment, decided to see if he could help.

When he arrived at the scene, less than a half-mile from the station, he heard the sound of ducks calling from inside the drain. The mother duck was still there standing vigil.

Chen peered inside the drain and saw a circle of eight yellow-and-brown feathered ducklings looking confused. The babies, he believed, had slipped through the drain cover’s cracks.

So he called three Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service members he knew and asked them to remove the drain cover.

Chen reached down about four feet into the storm drain while a Fire and Rescue employee held onto his belt and scooped up the ducklings.

One by one, Chen raised the tiny birds to the surface. As each one resurfaced, its mother, who had stopped quacking, greeted it. When all the ducklings were safe, the mother and her babies trekked down the road.