Injured swan returns to familiar waters, faces

June Casagrande

If swans could talk, it’s not hard to imagine what Pearl and

Rupert would be saying this week.

“Boy, did I miss you.”

“I was so worried. I thought I’d never see you again.”

By all human accounts, the separation anxiety the Balboa

Peninsula’s two beloved black swans experienced last week was beyond

consolation.

“Pearl was losing a lot of weight. Rupert was driving us nuts,

crying all night long like a newborn baby,” said Gay Wassall-Kelly,

the closest thing to a human mother that the two swans have.

It was Kelly who discovered a serious injury to Pearl’s leg last

month -- probably the result of a dog bite. Kelly, a longtime

Peninsula resident, took the female black swan to the Wetlands

Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach. From there, Pearl was

transferred to the Orange County Emergency Animal Clinic. The whole

ordeal took a week, and the good news is that Pearl is fine.

But the bad thing was that there was no way to tell this to her

mate, Rupert.

“He was really worried. He really missed her,” Kelly said. “And

Pearl was pining, too, losing weight.”

When they finally got Pearl back home to the beach on the harbor

side of the Peninsula, she didn’t even pause at her food dish.

Instead, she took off straight for the water and the Kellys didn’t

see her again until later that night, when she showed up on shore at

their home, with Rupert at her side.

The two black swans have been an item since Pearl was first

introduced to Rupert in the summer of 1999 by locals who wanted to

play matchmaker for longtime Newport notable Rupert.