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Cold pelicans find cozy home in Montross nursery Cold pelicans find cozy home in Montross nursery Date published: 2/10/2007
By FRANK DELANO
This is the story of how a Westmoreland County greenhouse became a cozy hospital for pelicans. Yesterday, 26 of the big, brown birds seemed to be resting comfortably on straw in a heated, humid greenhouse at Red Oak Nursery near Montross. The patients were hungry. Their long, slender beaks clacked as they gulped down fish laced with medicine. The nurse-dietitian was Diana O'Connor of the Wild Bunch Wildlife Rehabilitation Refuge near Warsaw. She rescued the first two pelicans last week by the icy Rappahannock River at Tappahannock. "They were starving and suffering from hypothermia and frostbite. They were so depleted and weak that we just picked them up," said O'Connor. She also found two dead birds on the shore. She called R.G. "Doc" Wexler, director of Wildlife Research and Rescue on the Chesapeake in southern Maryland. "Have you seen any pelicans over there?" she asked Wexler. "No," said Wexler. "Well, start looking," said O'Connor, a veteran wildlife rehabilitator. It didn't take long for Wexler and his volunteers in Maryland to find lots of pelicans in trouble in the frigid waters of the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River. "Pelicans don't have feathering or down to protect them from the cold," O'Connor said. On Wednesday, Wexler and his crew delivered a dozen pelicans in cages to a makeshift shelter. Around midnight, O'Connor arrived from Maryland with another eight. Four more came Thursday. "They're going to need a lot of fish," thought Gary Hutt, who owns the nursery. Hutt got involved in the pelican placement through his wife, Janice, who sells ads for The Westmoreland News in Montross. O'Connor came by the paper to buy an ad appealing for plastic sheeting. O'Connor wanted to wind-proof shelters for the pelicans at her refuge. But Janice Hutt thought she could get plastic from some of the many greenhouse growers she knew. She knew one especially well. "I asked my husband to offer Diana some plastic and he offered the pelicans a home," she said.
In the line where it says " Around midnight,
O'Connor arrived from Maryland with another
eight" it was actually Mary Martin, a licensed
rehabber from Maryland. Otherwise, a very
good and timely article. Good work!
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