“King and Queen of the Pelicans We”

by Ven Loetz

Pelican diorama on the second floor of Milwaukee Public Museum

The pelican diorama at Milwaukee Public Museum is impressive in many ways. It’s probably my favorite diorama on the second floor. There are a total of twenty taxidermy pelicans in the exhibit. So many pelicans! Doing so many pelicany things! Twelve of them are adults and eight are juveniles. We see them feeding and caring for young, we see them preening, we see them in various resting poses with tucked heads. One even has her throat pouch turned inside out. The only thing that disappoints is that there are no pelicans with outstretched wings. It would be nice to see the impressive 9 foot wingspan, but alas, we must settle for a dozen other wildly expressive poses.

Not only are the pelicans amazingly and artfully posed, but the location of the diorama is very telling. It is located in the Rocky Mountain region of the second floor. For most of the 20th century, pelicans were largely absent from Wisconsin, only being seen occasionally during migration. There are records of them living in the state from indigenous people and from early settlers, but with all the activity and industry of the late 19th and early 20th century, along with hunters killing them for sport, the pelicans disappeared. So the pelicans of the diorama are depicted nesting along the lakes of the Rockies and not the Great Lakes.

Now, over the past twenty to thirty years, as drought affects the western states and conservation efforts have protected the birds from being hunted, pelicans have returned to Wisconsin. They first returned to Horicon Marsh and then colonized the small, rocky islands in the Green Bay and Door County area. On a recent camping trip on Rock Island (Door County, Wisconsin), we were treated to the site of these majestic birds soaring through the sky. They look like the closest thing we’ll ever see to pterosaurs in flight. According to the fossil record, their iconic throat pouches have been effectively scooping fish for at least 30 million years.

Pelicans in flight looking pterosaur af (top). A pelican floating in Lake Michigan (bottom left). A sadly deceased pelican on a Rock Island beach.

Along a curving section of beach on Rock Island, many things had washed up on the shore. Most of these things were dead alewives, an invasive fish that die in droves and float like silvery shards on the lake surface, glinting in the sun. There were also a number of double-crested cormorants in various stages of decay, globs of brown algae slime, and driftwood accumulated on the white, water-worn silurian rocks. As I carefully stepped among the detritus, I sadly came across a single, dead pelican, its orange, webbed feet bright against the beach. I apologize if the site of this animal is sad or distressing. It’s important, though, to contemplate why the equally dead, taxidermy pelicans of the diorama are a delight while the same animal in a natural state of decay may seem disturbing. The pelicans in the diorama are frozen in time, as though caught mid-action in the busy activities of pelican life. The one on the beach, however, has been allowed to take its leave; beetles, flies, and other scavengers, microorganisms, all take bits of the great pelican. The pelican’s life now belongs to these other organisms. Its death sustains them.

Closer details of pelican diorama

Back in the studio, I look at my pelican photos and choose one pelican from the diorama. Isolated from the visual activity of nineteen other birds, this one is allowed to be itself. Nestled safely in my mental space, the pelican radiates in a suspended state between life and death. Between preservation and decay. Between joy and sadness. The “lovely leathery throats and chins” are folded in and the single eye, the only one seen by its visitors, looks out to ask us whether we see ourselves positioned in this middle world.

Pelican Jee, ink of paper, 2022 by Ven Loetz

from The Pelican Chorus, a poem by Edward Lear

“King and Queen of the Pelicans we;
No other Birds so grand we see!
None but we have feet like fins!
With lovely leathery throats and chins!
Ploffskin, Pluffskin, Pelican jee!
We think no Birds so happy as we!
Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican Jill!
We think so then, and we thought so still

 We live on the Nile. The Nile we love.
By night we sleep on the cliffs above;
By day we fish, and at eve we stand
On long bare islands of yellow sand.
And when the sun sinks slowly down,
And the great rock walls grow dark and brown,
Where the purple river rolls fast and dim
And the Ivory Ibis starlike skim,
Wing to wing we dance around,
Stamping our feet with a flumpy sound,
Opening our mouths as Pelicans ought;
And this is the song we nightly snort,—
Ploffskin, Pluffskin, Pelican jee!
We think no Birds so happy as we!
 Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican Jill!
 We think so then, and we thought so still!”

You can find this poem set to music in the song “Pelicans We” by Cosmo Sheldrake
(And I highly recommend you do)