Pelican Rescue

I found a pelican yesterday.

In my 300 and some days of beach walks, I have not once--until yesterday--found a pelican parked on the sand. I approached the bird to see if it would fly. It did not. When I got within three feet or so I backed off and observed for a bit. The pelican was alert. It was looking around and flexing its wings, but the wings seemed asymmetrical. I decided I would try to get in touch with some sort of bird rescue. Given the fact that the only breeding colonies for the California brown pelican in the western United States are just off shore in the Channel Islands, and that the bird only made it off the federal endangered species list in 2009, I figured a 411 call would be pretty straightforward.

Nope.

I decided to call the marine mammal rescue hot line that I put in my phone earlier this summer, thinking they could refer me. The outgoing message from was a weary sounding guy saying that his number was not the correct one for marine mammal rescue. He did however give out the correct number, but that number yielded a very long and detailed outgoing message including a list of every animal that qualified as a marine mammal. Meanwhile the pelican on the sand was still flapping one wing.

I think I tried 411 again, and got another couple numbers. Both were recorded messages. One was up in Santa Barbara. The other was a hummingbird rescue.

I called daughter C. Now living in St Paul, she's spent a lot of time sailing in these parts. Since I do not have a smart phone, she got on the internet for me and gave me a couple more numbers. I was thrilled to hear the voice of a real person, and the young woman on the line was very enthusiastic. "Oh! Can you transport the bird to us?" she asked. For a second I imagined myself hitch hiking, the immense bird tucked under my arm with my jacket thrown over its head in order to help it remain calm. But I came to my senses. These rescuers were in Malibu, I think, and did not travel this far north.

After a bit of pondering, I decided to call Harbor Patrol. A couple of time a day, and every evening about the time I'm ready to go to bed, I see their boat pass by my house. A real live person answered the phone. The guy asked me a few questions. Was their any blood? Was the bird in any visible distress? What were the nearest cross-street? "Okay," he said. "I'll call the bird lady. She'll be by to get the pelican as soon as she can."

I decided that I should hang around. What if a big dog was galloping down the beach off-leash? I'd have to call my mom and explain that I would be home late. I was already 20 minutes behind my usual arrival time for retuning from my morning walk. As I pulled my phone out one more time, I walked a little closer to the pelican...and he lifted off. The pelican flew a few feet and landed back on the sand. I followed, and then the bird took off again and flew away.

But I'm going to find out who this bird lady is and put her number in my phone.

And did you know that the brown pelican is the only pelican that's a plunge diver? It's breathtaking.

My mom and I were spellbound last February when they were diving right outside our windows.

Day of the Awesome Pants

I'm not sure how we got onto the subject, but I asked the girl if she had a favorite expression, and she told me she liked to say "Awesome pants!" My current favorite happens to be "Cool beans!"

The photo above does not do justice to how completely filthy our pants got today. How did we get so dirty? We climbed over this fence.

I should, of course, add that we were invited and, in fact, assisted in climbing over this fence by an uniformed environmental scientist who was surveying the area for snowy plover nests. The girl and I walked up to the fence to read the sign surrounding a portion of the dunes and struck up a conversation with the young woman with the awesome pants job. The girl and I then went on our way to hunt beach glass, but upon our return, the environmental scientist called to us and told us she'd found a nest with an egg in it, and did we want to see it?

Of course we did. As we marveled upon it, I asked why the egg was left untended. "The bird will return to lay a couple more eggs," the scientist said, "but won't start incubating them until all the eggs are in the nest. That way they all will hatch at the same time." She also told us that once the plover chicks do hatch, they set right to work hunting for sand fleas. They do not need to be fed by their parents. "They look like little cotton balls on legs," she said. "The first time I saw one I was hooked!"

As the girl and I walked back to the car, we saw a pair of snowy plovers dashing across the sand. We speculated that maybe they were the parents of the egg. And we talked about what an awesome pants job it would be to walk around in the sand dunes looking for the eggs of an endangered species.

Happy Earth Day/Where the Deer and the Antelope Play

A few mornings ago, I awoke stumbling out of a dream--caught in the vortex of my subconscious, it felt like forever before I could open my eyes. There was an enormous orange moon that turned out not to be a moon at all, but some kind of balloon-like satellite. This not-moon had fallen from the sky and came to rest on the street. The Someone was there, pointing out a small control box attached to the edge of the glowing sphere. And there were antelope. As the antelope bounded by--paying no heed to the fallen moon--their legs seemingly spring-loaded, I reminded the Someone of the backpacking trip where we'd seen a herd of them. Back in those pre-Wikipedia days, there were inexpensive guidebooks and pamphlets often purchased by hikers and day-walkers who wanted to learn the names of those wild things they might encounter on the trail. The backpacking trip I mentioned in the dream was a real life backpacking trip, and  I'll bet there's a booklet still on the shelf in the study in the house where I no longer reside, a check mark next to the picture of the animal who, it turns out, is not actually an antelope at all.

Yesterday, my mom pointed out an article which seems to have disappeared from the electronic version of my L.A. Times. I did, however, find THIS.  I was stunned to read that the pronghorn is critically endangered. Only fifty left in the wild? Today I dropped into a sort of Earth Day rabbit hole. I just couldn't wrap my head around it. While I often delighted in watching old movies with my kids and saying things like, "Look, oh my god, look, that's a typewriter," or "See that? It's a telephone with a dial! That's why we say dial tone," I don't ever want to say that I saw an entire herd of pronghorn in 1979, and that no one will ever see them in the wilderness again.

After  an hour with my iPad in the dentist's office waiting room while my mom had some work done, I'm happy to report that the peninsular pronghorn mentioned in the above link, is not the only sub-species of pronghorn on the planet Earth. The type I came across somewhere in the Sierra, seems to be managing--though my heart sunk a bit at THIS. I am not anti-hunting, but my brain did another trip back to the 70s when the Someone and I sat at the newly installed computers circa 1974 (could this be?--or am I conflating college with law school?) playing a game where the object was to properly manage the bison herd of  a by-gone era. We wiped them out. Inadvertently. Best intensions and all that, but oops! No more bison.

So, while I have no idea why I am still dreaming of the Someone occasionally, or why I dreamed of antelope, Happy Earth Day. The pronghorn is the fastest land mammal in the western hemisphere and also has the longest land mammal migratory route. Seen in the wilderness, they will take a backpacker's breath away, the white stripes across their throats streaking through the dappled light like no Nike swoosh has ever done. Your body will throb with adrenaline to be in the presence of so many wild animals at once. Your brain will grapple with their vertical springing vis a vis the swiftness at which they pass you by. Then you'll stand there stunned at what you've seen, the pronghorns long gone.

Photo Credit: michellefrancisphoto.smugmug.com