Injured Pelican Gets Help by Knocking on Research Center Door

Thought Question: If you could have any animal as a sidekick for a day, which would you choose and why?

For Edgar Allan Poe, it was a black raven who came to his door at midnight. For the scientists at a federal Florida research lab, it was a brown pelican rapping, rapping on the back door. 

The daytime seabird wasn’t there to utter a gloomy one-word message like Poe’s talking fictional fowl. It needed help. It had a three-pronged fishing hook piercing its wing. It also had a dozen cactus needles in its foot. The injured bird couldn't fly. 

“I always kind of thought in my head — and liked to think that — animals would know to either come to me for help or to come to the lab for help,” Annsli Hilton told The Washington Post. “But I never thought it would happen.” 

Hilton is a University of Miami researcher. She also works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) center in Panama City. The researchers who study big fish there helped the poor bird at once. It was tricky business. One held the bird by its beak and stomach. That was so Hilton could cut the attached fishing line. Another used wire cutters to snap the fishing lure. Hilton then used forceps to remove a little barb piercing the bird’s bone.    

The makeshift operation, including the cactus removal, was a success. The bird didn't get hurt worse or bite anybody.

Deborah Jacques of Pelican Science, an Oregon nonprofit, said that, had the NOAA researchers not intervened, the pelican likely would have starved to death or been killed by a predator.

The NOAA said on its website: “Once freed and given a clean bill of health, the bird took to the sky entirely free of hook and line.”

If that bird could talk, it might say “nevermore” to getting hooked by another angler.

Gif of a pelican from Giphy.