"I informed the person that we had no SPCA, but that went nowhere.
"So I called the SPCA and an inspector from Wellington called me back but she said she couldn't do anything."
Miss Jeffries said she contacted wildlife enthusiast Tara Swan through Facebook for help.
Miss Swan drove down from Eketahuna, and they made another call to the council requesting that someone come to unlock the padlock on the drain.
"They said they were looking for a key," Miss Swan said.
"And I said that's fine, but then they never turned up."
Miss Swan and Miss Jeffries waited with the trapped duckling for an hour but no one from the council arrived to unlock the grate.
They turned to Facebook for some extra helping hands.
"Someone turned up with some nets, and we used a pole to herd him into a corner," Miss Swan said.
"And then I jumped into the lovely cold water trying to scoop him out.
"He was tired, cold, and shivering, and you know ducklings die of the cold really easily and quickly."
Miss Swan said that because it was dark by the time the duckling was rescued, the mother could not be identified and so she took the duckling to her home and has kept him fed and under a heat lamp where he is doing "incredibly well".
"It's horrible that he didn't go back to mum straightaway and we always do try to give them back but he would have died. Simple enough, he would have died."
Miss Jeffries said that two previous calls to the council had been made by other residents earlier that day and that "nothing was done about it".
Masterton District Council spokesman Sam Rossiter-Stead said the council received a call about the trapped duckling just before 3pm on Wednesday and immediately attempted to locate the key to the storm drain.
The relevant contractor was dealing with a family medical emergency and had not been given a key to the drain.
A new padlock was being fitted in case a similar issue arose in the future, he said.
