An Oregon tot was unhurt — but plenty peeved — after falling 8 feet into a heating duct, according to reports.
Mom Saydie Reedy, of Coburg, was doing dishes Wednesday when her 3-year-old son, Jackson, alerted her to some kind of incident involving his younger brother, 10-month-old Kolson, at the family’s 1920-style home — with heating vents built into the floor, KMTR reports.
“My oldest came running to me calmly saying, ‘Baby in.’ He has apraxia, which is a speech disorder and doesn’t communicate well,” Reedy told the station.
Reedy’s maternal instinct kicked in, as she knew something was amiss, and immediately starting looking for Kolson.
“I searched the whole house for baby brother and noticed the vent gate was pulled up,” Reedy said. “I couldn’t hear him in there, but he was nowhere else to be found so I quickly called 911 panicking.”
Minutes later, Coburg police officers and fire officials responded and rescued Kolson after finding him some 8 feet down the heating vent, Reedy said.
“An officer stripped to pants and T-shirt and went under the house,” she recalled. “He shoved my son back up the vent, where another officer was waiting to grab him.”
Coburg police later acknowledged their unexpected meeting with Kolson in a statement posted to Facebook.
“CPD got a little visitor,” the post reads. “We’re thankful our officers and our partners at Coburg Fire District were at the right place at the right time.”
Remarkably, Kolson was not hurt during the ordeal, but did seem irritated by the fall, Reedy told The Oregonian.
“He didn’t break character once,” she told the newspaper. “When the officer lifted him up out of the crawlspace and handed him up, the first thing he did was glare at the officer.”
Reedy’s children had “never touched” the vent before, she said, adding that she was a little nervous before police responded to her home.
“I was pretty anxious — I thought to myself, who loses a kid in a vent?” Reedy continued. “But a lot of people have reached out and shared their own stories of things their kids have done.”
Kolson, meanwhile, seems to have gotten his sense of humor back.
“Today, he was crawling past the vent,” Reedy told the newspaper Monday. “He was banging on it and laughing.”