Heroes: Orange County residents from lifeguards to nurses gave hope and touched others’ lives in 1989. : LAGUNA NIGUEL : Birds of Many Feathers Flock to the Evanses’ Home

Linda and Richard Evans have handled some tough cases, but the albatrosses, they say, were the worst.

The Evanses operate a nonprofit bird clinic at their Laguna Niguel home and are known throughout Southern California as licensed rehabilitators of wild wetlands birds. So when eight huge seafaring albatrosses were discovered stowed on a Japanese freight ship, the Evanses got the call.

Because of sailors’ superstitions that killing or releasing an albatross is bad luck for a boat, the birds landed unharmed in Los Angeles Harbor and animal control authorities were notified. Enter the Pacific Wildlife Project.

The nonprofit project is a veterinary clinic in the Evanses’ garage. And their back yard is filled with about 20 cages containing a menagerie of recovering herons, grebes, loons, pelicans, doves, pigeons and even a chicken and a lost parrot.

The difficult part of the albatross adventure was not nursing them back to health from dehydration and starvation, Linda Evans said. Nor was it their steady diet of squid. “They were expensive guests . . . eating calamari all the time,” she said. The trouble was where to put a flock of birds with six- to eight-foot wing spans that are not native to the North American continent.

“We couldn’t release them here, so I called a rehabilitator I knew in Hawaii,” she said. It was decided that the birds could be released in a Honolulu sanctuary.

The next question was how to transport them. The U.S. Marines in El Toro agreed to ship the birds on a scheduled cargo flight to Hawaii. But while the Evanses were waiting for military clearance, a commercial airline offered to do the job, and for free.

Linda Evans, 42, who founded the clinic eight years ago, and Richard, 43, a veterinarian who treats exotic animals, have sacrificed a normal life in the interest of preserving nature many times.

One night, for instance, they received a call that a flock of 10 geese had become caught in an oil slick in San Bernardino County. The birds were sent to Orange County at 10 p.m., and the Evanses and some of their volunteer staffers spent most of the night using vegetable oil to dissolve the black goo stuck on the birds’ feathers.

They often receive visits from people who have rescued birds from cats or who have been referred by county animal control officers.

Carol Culver Vibrans, one of several volunteers at the clinic, recalled the time a Fuller Brush salesman walked into the house and began giving his spiel. As he did so, he inadvertently placed his brush case against a patient’s cage.

“I told him that he had leaned his case on a vulture’s cage and that they vomit when they’re scared,” Culver Vibrans said. “He went right on with his speech and didn’t seem to notice. All of a sudden, he stopped and looked around, realizing where he was and what was around. Then he packed up and left and never said another word.”

For the Evanses, this way of life is a 24-hour commitment.

“There are no holidays in rehabilitation, and we don’t have any vacations,” Linda Evans said. “We’re so swamped with things here that we’re upset that we have to go Christmas shopping at all. And there’s certainly no hope of getting out Christmas cards.”

Instead, the Evanses are spending their free time establishing a permanent facility large enough to handle the demand for wildlife care that brought more than 1,000 birds to their home this year.