Hope Flying High Again: Mutilated Pelican Freed

Hope took nine short strides from her kennel and paused, looking over the ocean and wide-eyed admirers at Little Corona Beach.

After waiting several minutes, she flapped her wings and soared a few feet above the calm ocean waves off Corona del Mar, lumbering toward the distant horizon.

Hope -- a 3-year-old endangered California brown pelican -- was released Wednesday, more than three months after a pedestrian found her walking along Magnolia Street in Huntington Beach with a sliced pouch.

A pelican’s pouch is crucial to its survival. Attached to the bird’s bill and covering its throat, it allows the animal to eat and drink and can hold up to 3 gallons of water. Hope’s pouch was cut from ear to ear, rendering it useless and exposing her throat. Officials said the cut appeared to have been made with a knife. She was one of several pelicans found this year in Orange County similarly mutilated, they said.

Reattaching Hope’s pouch required about 1,000 stitches and four surgeries lasting more than seven hours, said the veterinarians who saved her. During the rehabilitation process, they said, the bird was given multiple antibiotic treatments and fed about four dozen fish every day.

When Debbie McGuire first saw the mutilated pelican, she hoped one surgery would suffice. She is wildlife director of the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach, which undertook the bird’s repair. Four surgeries and three months of rehabilitation later, Hope’s flight brought tears to McGuire’s eyes Wednesday afternoon.

“I was so frustrated,” she said. “I was really hoping that the first surgery would work.”

The California brown pelican is an endangered species. About 5,000 breeding pairs remain in the state, according to the California Department of Fish and Game. Harming pelicans is a crime, McGuire said, and her center has offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of whoever is responsible for the mutilations.

Lee Florez, 33, relaxed near the Little Corona shore Wednesday with her children, Cole, 7, and Chandler, 6, as Hope soared over the ocean.

“I think those people should be held more accountable,” Florez said of people who mutilate wildlife. “We let people get away with these really brutal crimes.”

Corrina Rubio, 10, said she and her friend MacKenzie Sheppard, 9, went to the beach to play in the sand and look at the tide pools, not expecting to see a pelican.

“I though it was really pretty,” Corrina said. “I think it was scared to fly. It was really nice for the hospital people to take care of it.”