A Pelican in Peril
April 21, 2018 -- A sick pelican sat in the middle of the road, just ahead of me, on Castaways Lane. In the early morning in late April, these streets are quiet. Maybe I was the first person to see the sick pelican, as I nearly completed my hour-long walk. I hoped he wasn't sick; perhaps he'd just consumed a large fish and was temporarily impaired. So I walked the short distance of Tropical Way and back, hoping to find that the pelican had flown away. No, the big bird was still there, stubbornly sitting smack in the middle of the blacktop. Something was wrong with him; my guess was that red tide poisoning was his problem. I've taken small birds to CROW (Care and Rehabilitation of Wildlife -- a wildlife hospital on Sanibel Island) in the past. But I'm not trained in how to handle big birds. So I called CROW. Thank heavens for mobile phones! I wanted to call my neighbor Jim, whom I know does rescue big birds regularly. But I didn't have his number.