Hi Tweeters,
This was forwarded to me from the Anchorage Daily News. Its quite the
story.
Tracee Geernaert

> Thursday, August 12, 1999
> Boat brings booby surprise
>
> By MOLLY BROWN
> Daily News reporter
>
> The ancient mariner had his albatross,
> and Paul Edwards, captain of a
> 145-foot yacht called the Royal Eagle,
> had his brown booby. A brown booby
> named Russell.
>
> Brown boobies are seabirds common in
> the Gulf of Mexico and warm areas of
> the Pacific Ocean. They aren't found in
> chilly Alaska seas. But Russell, a juvenile, hitchhiked to Alaska from
> Hawaii, following the yacht on its 2,200-mile trip across the Pacific.
>
> The bird wound up in port at Kodiak on Tuesday, eight days after leaving
> Hawaii, battered by a storm and a long way from its warm-water home.
> Now it's being treated for hypothermia in Anchorage while wildlife
> officials make arrangements to ship it back to the islands.
>
> The tale began when the bird followed the yacht out of the Honolulu
> harbor last week. Crew members and passengers didn't feed it, Edwards
> said. As the yacht, on a round-the-world cruise with seven passengers,
> headed north, the bird rested on the vessel's radar arch and would leave
> on "daily missions," he said.
>
> "But it would return as if we were its mother," he said. One of the
> passengers named it Russell. According to the "Birds of North America"
> field guide, the birds often follow ships at sea.
>
> Just maybe not this far.
>
> On Day 4 of the trip, the Royal Eagle encountered cold and stormy
> weather in the Pacific, Edwards said.
>
> "The bird was hanging from grim death, swinging on the radar tower,"
> Edwards said.
>
> When the brown booby blew down onto the deck, Edwards and his
> passengers took it inside and made it a nest of towels in a laundry
> basket.
>
> They used a turkey baster to feed it tuna mixed with bread and milk,
> Edwards said.
>
> Russell, dark brown with white underparts and wing linings, became
> "rather stinky" after four days. Passengers and officers wiped him down
> with a warm cloth or sponge, Edwards said. "He's a seabird. You know
> what they do a lot of," he said.
>
> Upon arrival in Kodiak on Tuesday, Edwards called the U.S. Fish and
> Wildlife Service to report the battered bird. Jonathan Schaffler from the
> Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge arranged for ERA Aviation to fly it to
> Anchorage.
>
> Now it is receiving care from Barbara Doak at the Bird Treatment and
> Learning Center. On Wednesday, Doak said the bird was in critical care.
>
> "The bird's temperature is hypothermic, and we haven't been able to get
> it
> up to normal," she said. After Kodiak, the group will head to San Diego
> and then to Venezuela.
>
> Though the birds like to follow ships, Doak said, she hasn't seen a booby
> in her 10 years at the center.
>
> "This is not at all normal," she said.
>
> Russell will stay here until healthy enough to head home courtesy of a
> Hawaiian Vacations/Hawaiian Airlines flight, Schaffler said.
>
> * Reporter Molly Brown can be reached at mbrown at adn.com
>
>
>
>
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