Celebrity Roundup at the Hotel Del

It was a wild weekend at the Hotel Del.

Chuck Berry checked in, incognito, for an interview with Playboy magazine. There were four governors--from Nevada, Tennessee, New Jersey and California--and Albert Shanker, the teachers’ union czar.

Mike Wallace turned up, and a handful of Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonists, and John Travolta was reportedly sighted on the beach. As a grand finale, the 98-year-old, 700-room hotel made a cameo appearance Saturday night on TV’s “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”

In the segment, filmed late last year, Lorna Luft and her husband picnicked on the beach with Hotel del Coronado owner M. Larry Lawrence. What did they eat? hotel spokesman Patrick Hennessey was asked. “Squab that was attacked by pigeons after the picnic.”

Tom Wolfe Gets Ax

Tom Wolfe, the dapper chronicler of contemporary culture and commentator on art, architecture and things astronautical, was to have spent this Thursday evening at UC San Diego discoursing on The Novel in an Age of Nonfiction.

But last week UCSD scotched the speech after learning that Wolfe had violated an exclusivity clause in his contract. He had agreed to speak at noon Thursday to the City Club of San Diego--an arrangement barred, without special permission, by UCSD.

George Mitrovich of the City Club, who invited Wolfe after the author had signed at UCSD, says he informed “the person who signed the contract for the university.” But Lynne Peterson, director of university events, says no one talked to Mitrovich, including the business manager who signed the contract.

So the university killed the engagement, in spite of offers from Mitrovich and Wolfe’s agent to cancel the City Club. “We just weren’t in any mood to renegotiate it,” said Peterson. “No more Mr. Nice Guy.”

Who suffers? Wolfe devotees. General admission at UCSD was to have been $8, with discounts for senior citizens and students. The City Club is holding its event at the Hilton. General admission: $25.

Terning Point for Beach

The guardians of national security and the defenders of an endangered bird are locked in a little quiet diplomacy over who has first dibs to a stretch of the Silver Strand known as Delta Beach.

The Navy likes to use the beach to train new recruits. But the California least tern uses the beach for nesting--an activity guarded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Now the Navy might like to do more training on the bayside beach--a desire Lt. A.J. Banks Jr. declined to detail. Martin Kenney, a Wildlife Service biologist, said the Navy’s plans come partly in response to new international tensions.

In any event, for now an uneasy truce prevails: Frogmen stay off the sand during nesting season, April through August. To change that, the Navy will have to renegotiate a compact it signed in palmier days, setting aside Delta Beach as a least tern preserve.

Kenney and Banks are laying out their positions in letters, and Kenney tries to check in on the beach during visits to San Diego. Meanwhile, any damage done to tern nests, if deliberate, could be cause for calling in law enforcement, Kenney said.

That, he said, is something he would rather avoid.

Hide and Seek at the Zoo

All’s fair in love and war: That principle reigns in the guerrilla war being waged in the canyons of the San Diego Zoo. It’s open season on the ubiquitous free-range fowl, so the zoo’s chicken, jungle fowl, and peafowl dragnet is in high gear.

These days, bird keepers are out at sunup, lurking near the flamingo pool and eyeing incautious peacocks. The keepers can be spotted brandishing custom-made leg hooks, stuffing traps with millet, and plunging into the undergrowth in pursuit of errant guinea fowl.

Keeper Richard Rhoam preys mercilessly on the peacocks’ blinding vanity as they “display” for passing peahens. He skulks nearby until the tail is in full flower, then steals up under cover of the fan and snags a leg.

But the enemy is wising up. Millet disappears mysteriously from traps, and peafowl take cover with the zoo’s more antisocial inhabitants. Birds call out warnings at the sight of the keepers’ chocolate-colored jackets, and peacocks are learning the uses of public opinion.

One morning recently, Rhoam paced near the zoo’s entrance as a peacock plopped out of a tree and began to display. Reaching for his hook, Rhoam took a last look around--and came up short against a forest of tripods and 50 awe-struck first-graders, eyes fixed in admiration on Rhoam’s prey. He shrugged, and threw in the towel.

So far, the birds have the upper hand. Forty jungle fowl have been shipped to the University of New Mexico and two brush turkeys and eight jungle fowl went to a city park in Rhode Island. But the members of the Resistance are making up for lost time.

“This is definitely baby chick season and the birds are hatching like crazy,” said Jeff Jouett, the zoo spokesman. “There is a conservative estimate of 200 baby chicks on the grounds, so we are losing ground fast.”