The Pelican
It doesn’t take much to thrill two baby boomer Midwesterners on a sunny California beach in February. So when my sister and I came face to face with this pelican when we rounded the side of the restaurant at the end of the Oceanside pier, we were delighted. I manned the camcorder while my sister took still photos. (Credit for today’s photo goes to her.)
The attention didn’t phase the bird, intent as it was upon it’s morning grooming ritual. A few minutes into recording my version of The Pelican Brief, three things became abundantly clear: the bird was amazingly flexible, its beak is a lethal weapon, and the species has no need to invent toilet paper
Our encounter with the mangy and tourist-weary pelican reminded me of a limerick I learned in elementary school. Maybe you learned it, too. The part I memorized was:
A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belican.
He can take in his beak
Food enough for a week,
I thought the poem was by Ogden Nash, but a little research informed me that humorist Dixon Lanier Merritt penned the ditty. The research also revealed why every elementary teacher’s rendition stops before the last line:
But I’m damned if I see how the helican.
No wonder teachers cut the last line. They want to keep their jobs. But after watching one bird contort it’s body and wield its beak as only a peli-can, the last line of Merritt’s poem makes perfect sense. Just don’t tell any of my former students I said that. They would be scandalized.
