Lake Chabot Drained for Wild Animal Attraction : New Park Leaves Birds High and Dry

The ducks and geese at Lake Chabot were as helpless as, well, ducks out of water when the lake was drained to make way for tigers and elephants.

That they’ve been saved at all is due largely to Anne Pace, who fed the birds for six years and then saw them suffer when the lake was emptied so that Marine World-Africa/USA, a wild animal and aquatic park, could move from Redwood City.

City officials had assumed the birds would take off for parts unknown.

“We figured they’d go over to White Slough or K mart or wherever,” Mayor Terry Curtola said.

Few Could Fly

Not these birds. Few could fly. After the water went, they just waddled along like so many penguins.

Officials at Marine World said they had no idea the problem would be created by the lake’s draining.

“I only wish we’d known before,” park president Michael Demetrios said. “No one anticipated this.”

Pace said that dogs often attacked the birds when they were landlocked. One week “six ducks died at my feet,” she said.

On top of that, the lake had many deep cracks that trapped the birds’ legs.

Pace claimed that someone forced a golf ball down the throat of a gander she dubbed Grandpa. The ball was believed to have worked its way down into the bird’s crop, where it stayed and dangled in the loose skin. However, park officials said Monday that no golf ball was found when veterinarians operated last week.

“There may have been one at one time. . . . We all assumed it was a golf ball,” said park spokesman Jim Bonde, who said that doctors instead found a tumor in Grandpa’s throat.

With Pace’s help, the other birds have been taken to Lake Herman just outside the city limits, but it was not easy getting them there.

Marine World sent in Harold Francis, its head animal keeper, who used several techniques to catch the birds.

“We caught some by hand as we were feeding them,” he said. “But they got real aware of what we were trying to do. And we call them bird-brained.”

Francis eventually built a pen in some bushes and told Pace to feed the birds near the pen instead of by the lake.

“I came up one morning and was able to surround them with the pen,” Francis said.

Net a Last Resort

He said he would use a net only as a last resort because it would be “traumatic.” However, he had to use it once--on Grandpa.

“I was determined to get him and bring him to Marine World for medical treatment,” Francis said. “He’s got some stitches. As soon as he heals completely, he’ll be down at the lake with his friends.”

Those who are glad the birds have a new home include Jan White, director of the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Suisun City, where some of the injured birds had been taken.

“People would pick up ducks with joint infections caused by the hard pack and bring them to us for treatment,” she said. “It was pitiful.”

The ducks and geese weren’t wild, she said. For one thing, wild fowl can fly.

Pace said the whole mess is the Easter Bunny’s fault. Some parents bought baby ducks for their children for Easter presents, she said, but when the ducks grew up the neighbors complained. The birds were taken to Lake Chabot and let loose.

“I know from my years coming down here that all the ones here were born out here,” Pace said, “the ducks and geese both.”