One piece of the backlog from last week is done:

night station 2.

For today's news...

Heard a smidgen of conversation between dispatch and one of my wardens this afternoon, just before I headed into the house. Something about "a large white bird, like a pelican. With a hurt wing, by the fence."

Oookay, he has that call already, I'll let him handle it. I grab my planner and head into town and the highway shop to air up my tires. Gonna be on rocks most of tomorrow, and the air pressure in my tires is still low for driving in sand. Need to get those sidewalls a little higher off the ground for rocks.

Going into town, on the old highway, and there's a woman in a company truck sitting alongside the road, talking on a cell phone.

Okay, nothing really unusual there.

But she stares at me as I drive past. And as I head into the highway shop yard, I see her right behind me.

Odd.

I think I know where the hurt white bird is.

Sure enough, on the return trip, there she is again, parked in the same spot. As I pull up to her window, it is clear she's been expecting me.

Well, not me, but somebody in one of our green trucks. And that somebody arrives seconds after me.

Turns out the white bird that looks like a pelican is a pelican. She just didn't know we had such birds out here in the west, and didn't want to sound like a fool claiming she had found one.

A young bird, still some rusty brown juvenile feathers on the wings. Hunkered down in the sage off the road.

Wisely, I hop the fence first, and slowly herd the flightless bird closer to the fence. Unable to get around me or the warden, the tired bird soon gives up and collapses.

A fateful decision.

I quickly lurch forward and press one hand on its back, the other grabbing at the bill.

You gotta watch pelicans and their bills. They're more willing to bite than any hawk or eagle I've handled, and their mouth opens wide.

I am horrified to find myself holding a bloody bill, with flopping skin.

The pouch, that wonderful tool of a pelican, is ripped. From beak to chin, the thin, flexible skin is ripped totally open and bleeding.

This is not good.

But my foresight works well for me, as I have to hand the pelican across the fence to the novice warden.

Who soon finds I don't want to take the bird back once I've crossed the fence. Handled enough of those smelly, lousy (literally) birds, thank you.

But, with the woman standing nearby, professing that she has called one of the local vets, and will gladly pay any fees for the pelican's care, we have to decide...

What's best for the bird? (And not what's best for her conscience.)

Can a pelican's pouch be repaired? How do you feed one if it can't use its pouch to hold and shift food for swallowing?

I call the expert. The Audubon rehabilitator I visited just a week ago.

She's saved pelicans before. But never with a torn bill. She also does not know if it even can be repaired. Or how the bird could eat without a pouch. But she is willing to try. They almost never say never.

But she wants to know... what about the other injuries?

Well, we didn't look that close. Mainly concerned about the pouch... So, we look at the calm bird nestled under the warden's coat on his passenger seat.

I do not point out the bird louse I see abandoning its host for his upholstery.

The bloody back seems to just be from the pouch, where the bird had rested its head under the wings. But that right wing...

Flight bones are fine. The problem is the wrist joint. It's a bloody mess, with dried pieces of bones sticking out.

The vets and Audubon folks tell us long bones can be fixed pretty easy.

Joints can't. However careful you are, the tendons are gone, and the bones fuse. It'll heal, but not flex.

This bird'll never fly again.

Nor, I suspect, could it ever dive underwater for food with a rigid wing.

As much as this woman wants to save her discovered charge, and as much as we want to make her happy, all we can do for this bird is give it a long, painful attempt at recovery.

A recovery we know won't succeed.

It'll never be a pelican again.

Fortunately, she is here for all of this. The phone call, the examination, the discussion. By the time we have reconciled what has to happen with this pelican, she is, too.

And we part ways. Her to resume whatever she was doing, and me to home. And the warden...

...to do what has to be done.