When I was visiting at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland, one of the staff members, Kathleen (Kathy) O’Malley, shared some stories about the special whoopers she’s nurtured. Canus, the founding sire whooping crane of Patuxent, was a small chick with an injured wing when he was captured on Canadian nesting grounds in 1964. His name came from combining Canada and US—the two nations that equally share responsibility for whooping cranes. He was the first whooper Kathy ever saw, and she always felt a special connection to him, the original and oldest whooper at Patuxent.
“Almost twenty years after I met him,” she told me, “I would be with him when he died even as the veterinarian, myself, and two other technicians struggled to save him. It broke all our hearts to lose him, but I was grateful to have had the chance to say good-bye.” Canus lived for thirty-eight years and is the second oldest captive whooper. (The oldest is Rattler, who still lives at the International Crane Foundation and turned forty in 2008.)
She learned a lot about Canus from Bruce Williams, who worked at Patuxent for more than forty years. He was there when Canus arrived, knew him as a young bird, and shared stories.
“Bruce taught me everything I needed to know about the quirks of raising whooper chicks,” Kathy said. “I could not have succeeded that first year without Bruce’s guidance.” It was Bruce who comforted her when she lost her first chick, “understanding exactly how I felt.” Ironically, Canus died just two months before Bruce, who had cancer. Kathy remembered calling Bruce to tell him of Canus’s loss. She recalled him being saddened and shocked, saying, “I thought for sure he’d outlast me by years.”
At Patuxent, everyone is familiar with the name of Canus, and when Kathy is working with the chicks she always thinks, “Each one could be another Canus, singularly critical to establishing a new flock, or passing on strong genes, or capable of surviving in the face of disaster. Each one is that special.”
Lazarus was another bird Kathy got to know in her first year. “At seven days of age, she had severe pneumonia, and the sandhills raising her in the field abused her almost to death. They’d broken both her wingtips, damaged her tongue and the tip of one toe. She nearly died twice in the next twenty days, but finally pulled through.” Kathy stayed up many nights with her. The veterinarian at the time insisted that Kathy “loved her to life.” Lazarus eventually became the first naturally fertile bird at Patuxent. “She will always be my favorite,” Kathy admitted.
“Since I spend most of my time raising chicks, I interact with Lonely a lot,” she continued. “After all our years of working together, he usually starts dancing the minute he sees me. How could I not love him?”
Perhaps Kathy’s favorite recollection concerned the first five whoopers she raised. When they became adolescents and moved into their new big pen, it was decided that Kathy should stop interacting with them lest they become too dependent on a single human being. “It was a hard separation for me,” she said, “but I understood it was best for the birds.” Nine months later, the crew was shorthanded and asked Kathy to help feed them, offering her a chance to see her “kids.”
“I saw them at a distance,” Kathy told me, “all five still together, beautiful birds, more white now than cinnamon. I was standing in the back of the truck with the feedbags, and on impulse gave the ‘parent’ purring call I’d used when raising them. All five whooper heads shot up and they all turned to stare at me. Then, as a group, they ran to the corner of the pen closest to the truck, flapping and flying, and once they landed all five began calling loudly to me. The rest of the crew seemed dismayed. They hadn’t thought there was a chance the cranes would recognize me or care if they did. And here they were calling their mom, something they had never done before, clearly excited to see me after such a long absence. It was a wonderful moment!”
