Four Carson City boys recently turned a game of "toss the shoe" into a rescue mission.
On Thursday evening, Chris Crevling, 12, Josh Crevling, 13, and Neal Keyes, 12, were standing on a curb near Bonanza Drive seeing which one could kick their shoes off their feet the farthest.
That's when Chris noticed something amiss.
A mother and father quail and their 15 babies were crossing Shenandoah Drive. The chicks, as the boys describe them, were tiny, fuzzy little things and were having a hard time getting up on the sidewalk. Five of the babies ran the wrong way and fell into a storm drain.
Not content to watch the little birds die, the boys jumped to action, trying to lift the grate from the drain to rescue the birds.
"The birds are just like a human beings. They care because it takes a lot to lay the eggs and get babies," Chris said.
Realizing their efforts were not enough, the trio enlisted Neal's brother, Russell, 15, and mother, Patti, in the operation. With a crowbar, the boys chipped away at the gutter's concrete a little bit and removed the cover.
The father quail had led his brood down the street, but the mother quail ran around near the boys, frantically searching for her babies.
The drain was several feet deep and was infested with at least "one huge, hairy spider."
"I was kind of scared we weren't going to be able to do it," Josh said.
Neal and Josh tried to hold Chris' feet and drop him into the drain, but that didn't work. They then came up with the idea of using a fishing net and a broom to rescue the birds. It worked.
"They're fine now," Chris said.
"It was really the humane thing to do," Russell said. "The least thing you could do to save a life is pry up a drain cover. It took us over an hour, but I would have spent six hours."
The boys aren't new to animal rescue. Chris and Josh untangled a prong horn from a barbed wire fence once. Russell and Neal saved a pigeon that had been shot in its wing. They're happy to report that Pidgeotto is flying now.
"I feel pretty good about saving the quail," Neal said. "If we'd just left them there, I would have worried about it all night. How would I feel if I were trapped down there and someone didn't help me out?"
"We were kind of worried about getting in trouble," Chris said with a glance at the chipped concrete. "But I don't care. I think I speak for all of us when I say we're happy we did this."