THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 30, 1994 TAG: 9412290154
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 05 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARY REID BARROW, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
Three ailing juvenile brown pelicans in Virginia Beach found out there is a Santa Claus after all.
This Santa, however, flies a Continental Airlines plane and his elves are volunteers with Wildlife Response, the Hampton Roads group that rehabilitates ill or injured wild animals.
Two of the pelicans, recovering from an illness, and one, recovering from an injured wing, are well on their way to good health, thanks to the elves.
The pelicans also did not miss out on their winter migration to a warmer climate thanks to the Continental jet, which carried the sickly birds on a commercial flight to sunny Miami.
The pelicans' tale began in August when the Wildlife Response hotline got a call about an ill young pelican at Croatan Beach. Volunteer animal rehabilitator Lisa Barlow, who specializes in caring for big birds, took the pelican in. Then another sick pelican was brought to her at the end of September and a week later, a third one arrived with an injured wing.
``I called them Manny, Moe and Joe,'' Barlow said.
When it appeared that a course of antibiotics had cured the two ill pelicans, Barlow released them at Croatan. She continued to care for the one with the injured wing.
``A week and a half later, one of them showed up at 17th Street begging from a fisherman,'' Barlow said.
``And the other one I picked up at Sandbridge,'' added rehabber Linda Pennock, who stepped in to help Barlow.
Back on antibiotics, the birds did not appear to be getting any better this time around, so Pennock called Pelican Harbor, a pelican rehabilitation facility in Miami. Experts there suggested that it was too cold and the birds needed warmth to recover. Neither Barlow nor Pennock had a heated area large enough to house two pelicans.
Pennock then prevailed on Redmill Farms resident Sam Harrell to let the birds recover in his heated shed. The birds began to get well earlier this month about the time the third pelican's wing had healed. The issue became what to do next.
``We knew if we released them here in the cold and their being juveniles, they'd never make it,'' Pennock said.
She called Pelican Harbor again, and the facility agreed to care for the birds and release them in Miami.
The next problem was how to get them to Florida. Wildlife Response is an all-volunteer organization. They receive some donations, but for the most part members pay expenses from their own pockets.
``It being right here at Christmas, none of us had the money to pay for a flight,'' Pennock said.
She found Santa Claus in Ray Lahtela, Continental Airlines' director of airport services at Norfolk International Airport, who agreed to ship the birds to Florida for free. Then Pennock scurried about getting a permission letter from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to transport federally protected birds and a veterinarian's health certificate.
The birds took off aboard Continental's sleigh Dec. 16. They even changed sleighs in Greensboro, N.C., supervised by Continental personnel, Lahtela said. Pennock called Pelican Harbor that evening.
``I was like a new mother. My children were on that flight!'' Pennock said. ``They said they arrived safely, ate some fish and were bedded down for the night.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by CHARLIE MEADS
Lisa Barlow, a Wildlife Response volunteer who helped nurse three
pelicans back to health, is now caring for a hawk.
Photo by LISA BARLOW
Wildlife rehabber Linda Pennock said she felt like a mother with
children - the pelicans - on flight to Miami. ``They said they
arrived safely, ate some fish and were bedded down for the night,''
Pennock said.
by CNB