121 Rusty 



two captive cranes. All of us were in agreement that nothing would 

 be lost, so far as the survival of the wilderness race was concerned, 

 by bringing those two birds together, if this could be arranged. 

 I visited both the Gothenburg Gun Club in Nebraska and the zoo 

 in New Orleans and, in addition to looking the two cranes over 

 carefully, I discussed with those in charge the ideas that we had 

 in mind. As a result of the cooperation of Jack Kennedy and 

 other members of the Nebraska club, their bird was made available 

 to us. George Vierheller of the St. Louis Zoo very generously 

 agreed to send a truck out to Nebraska for it, and to keep it 

 in St. Louis long enough to look it over and bring it into condition 

 for the eventual trip to New Orleans, where George Douglass, 

 in charge of the zoo there, was quite delighted at the prospect of 

 bringing the two birds together. All this was accomplished, and at 

 length the pair of them were placed in the same enclosure for 

 by astonishingly good luck, as it turned out, the Nebraska bird 

 was actually a male and the New Orleans bird a female. This was 

 early in 1948. 



While the Nebraska bird was still living in its original pen near 

 Gothenburg, I had looked up its history. The Lincoln County 

 Tribune for June 11, 1936, contained this item: 



Brady, Neb., June 10 (Special to The Tribune). 



A large white Heron was sighted by the Henry George girls 

 while riding their bicycles Friday and returning to the house 

 with the news, Mr. George took the car and drove the Heron 

 for a mile into a 5-foot wire netting fence where it was caught. 

 It had been shot and one wing and its eye were injured. It 

 easily looked over the fence. It was turned over to the Gothen- 

 burg sanctuary where it was let loose. 



Some "Heron," that could "easily" look over a five-foot fence! 

 The date, too, was hard to understand, for the average spring- 

 migration date in recent years for Nebraska has been close to 

 mid-April, though there were a few records for May. Yet this 

 actually was a whooping crane and in this ignoble manner he 

 became a flightless, one-eyed captive. When removed from the 

 Gothenburg enclosure he was thus no less than a dozen years 



