The great rescue from the underworld

I've been very, very busy, this is a post from over 6 weeks ago and I still didn't get around to editing & posting it...

To say the city has been doing a poor job at renovating the artificial lake at the park would be an understatement, it's more like a disaster, and sadly a quite deliberate one. Some of those in charge of this are scumbags that absolutely hate animals, and especially my beloved nutrias.

Nutrias normally rely on the water for refuge, but since the water was gone now, Martok and the family had taken refuge in the very drainpipe through which their lake had vanished.
Then the day came and I found that the municipality had now closed off the entrance to the drainpipe, trapping the nutrias inside. I was devastated, I thought my beloved friends to be dead.

But then with the help of some human friends who care for them too, we lifted off some manhole lids leading down to the drainpipe. An underground maze was thus uncovered, mostly consisting of pipes less than 2' wide, big enough to easily admit a nutria, but too small for a human. But further "downstream" we found a larger tunnel, about 6' high, just tall enough for me to walk upright in it - and I was the only person physically capable of climbing down. Large spiders guarding the manhole openings posed a further deterrence to the others...

So I went down alone exploring this tunnel, and I quickly rediscovered my little furry friends in it!
The tunnel went on for about 300 feet in either direction from the manhole. On the western side it ended abruptly at a sheer wall of metal, above which a very large pipeline, about 4 feet wide, opened into the tunnel on the right side. There was a constant rushing noise as of enormous volumes of water. It was quite scary, thinking if any slider or floodgate were to be opened right now, the water masses might come rushing down through the huge pipe above me and wash me away through this tunnel.

On the opposite end, the tunnel led to the Rhine river, but there was no direct way out but only a sort of "crossroads", with another water pipe coming in from the left, the water poring down into a small basin that entered into a further pipe, presumably leading into the Rhine river, but this latter pipe again was less than 2' wide; if the tunnel were to be flooded the nutrias might get washed out here, but I wouldn't fit through that pipe myself.

Fortunately the tunnel itself had no water flowing, only about 2'' were in the rounded bottom of it. I walked barefoot in it since I didn't have any rubber boots with me on that first day.

I continued bringing the six nutrias food down here for the next three or four days, being the only person who could do it. But my fellow human nutria friends had been active in their own ways, contacting a professional animal rescuer. He came all the way from Dusseldorf the following Saturday. He and I then climbed into the tunnel together and got the nutrias out!

He put a video of the operation on Youtube, but it's in German language, which I don't speak.

Here's me on the rescue day, getting ready to climb down once more.

There were more nutrias to rescue in the following days in other parts of the park.

Still sunburned from the day, here I was late at night (and night falls VERY late in Germany at this time of the year!), having just rescued a baby nutria.

So glad my Martok and family are back up on the grass and able to swim in their lake again, which is slowly being refilled with water now.

Now lately I've been able to get a little more sleep again, I normally need to go to bed early since I get up at 5 AM for workout during the summer. Afternoons I usually ride to the park to look after them.