Pelicans Belly Up for Oil Change

--Skittish brown pelicans sickened by an oil spill led wildlife officials in Jacksonville, Fla., on a wild-goose chase for weeks. But 52 of the birds apparently tired of the game and waddled up to an emergency bird rescue center. “It is almost too unbelievable to be true, but it happened,” said Cindy Mosling, director of the Bird Emergency Aid and Kare Sanctuary known as BEAKS. Volunteers had cleaned more than 160 birds in a bathhouse area fronting the beach called Pelican Plaza after an oil spill along the Atlantic shore last month. But there were no big pelicans among the group. Then “they just started coming in front of the bathhouse area where we were working. A couple of them even just walked into the plaza, right up to us,” Mosling said.

--In another close encounter of the animal kind, three of the 100 firefighters who responded to a call from the Catskill (N.Y.) Game Farm complained that they were chased by a hippopotamus and nearly fell into a pit of snakes. A propane-burning heater had ignited ceiling joints in the giraffe house, Kathie Schulz, daughter of the private zoo’s owners, said. The building also housed elephants, hippopotamuses and snakes. Schulz insisted that it was only because the firefighters were unfamiliar with the animals that they thought they were being chased. The firefighters “were on their hands and knees fighting the flames and suddenly they saw the animals. I guess that’s kind of scary,” Schulz said. The snakes included boa constrictors and pythons, but “nothing poisonous,” she said.

--The verdict is in. Charles Alton Ellis, a college professor from Illinois, was acknowledged by the Court of Historical Review in San Francisco as the engineering genius who designed the Golden Gate Bridge, and Joseph Strauss, a promoter from Chicago, got credit for building it. Strauss headed the engineering firm that promoted and later built the span that this year celebrates its 50th birthday. A bronze statue of him stands in a park near the bridge toll plaza with the inscription, “creator and designer.” Municipal Judge George T. Choppelas listened to an hour of testimony in the mock trial and decided that Ellis “and others” were responsible for the design, not Strauss, and that all of them deserved to be remembered. However, he added, Strauss “was the leader of the project. Throughout history, the commander in chief gets the credit in victory and the blame in defeat. Joseph Strauss was the commander in chief of this project. It is Strauss’ bridge. Without him, the bridge would not have been built at that time.” The Court of Historical Review meets periodically to debate controversial historic events.