Tree triggers rescue of little yellow digger by bigger digger
It was supposed to be the little yellow digger’s big moment, shifting a large tree that had been threatening a historic one-lane bridge in Taranaki.
Instead, the digger found itself stuck in the Manganui River and, like its counterpart in the famous children’s story The Little Yellow Digger, it had to be rescued by a bigger orange digger.
Its foray into the river began on Monday last week, when the weather turned quite nasty and it poured and poured with rain.
It’s not known quite what happened that led to it getting stuck, but photos circulated on social media last week showed the digger partially submerged.
The yellow digger had been trying to free a large tree from beneath the historic Bristol Rd Bridge. Flooding in August had trapped the tree against the onelane bridge. During the flood the bridge could be heard ‘‘creaking’’ as the log bounced up and down with the surging water of the river.
On Tuesday last week, a bigger orange digger was brought in to help pull out the yellow digger. And while the orange digger was able to rescue the yellow digger, the troublesome log remains in place.
It’s not the first time an orange digger has been called in to help a machine in trouble.
Last year a little orange digger came to the rescue of a truck that had been delivering a new classroom to New Plymouth’s Devon Intermediate when it got stuck on the rain-sodden playing field.
The Little Yellow Digger children’s storybook series follows a little digger that ends up in tricky situations and needs rescuing – usually by another bigger digger, or even a bigger, bigger digger.
Written by Betty Gilderdale and illustrated by her husband Alan, the original Little Yellow Digger picture book is one of New Zealand’s alltime bestselling children’s picture books with more than 500,000 copies printed.