The Icelandic Canadian - 01.09.1981, Qupperneq 42

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
AUTUMN, 1981
the town in lava, ashes and cinders before
returning to a fitful slumber. Several hun-
dred feet below the sheer drop edge of the
slope was the chilly water of the North
Atlantic, pounding onto giant boulders and
stony shoreline.
Over both shoulders Wikenhauser carried
two sturdy wooden boxes. They were
honeycombed with four-inch wide PVC
pipe to simulate the birds’ natural burrows,
and would be used to house the little puf-
flings from here to Peoria.
The method of capture was to stretch out
on the turfted hillside, extend one’s arm into
one of the hundreds of burrows tunneled
into the slope, and grope for a tiny, black-
feathered dweller. Within an hour he had
extracted 20 chicks, along with more than a
few testy, not to say very surprised, mother
puffins. The adult birds were released and
their offspring tenderly inserted into the
makeshift burrows and the cover closed.
Mesh wiring allowed air to enter and a
smattering of soil and straw at the base of the
PVC piping gave the pufflings something
akin to the interior of their natural nest.
From the windy bluff, it was a 15-minute
ride by car to the airport, and then a 25-
minute Icelandair flight back to Reykjavik.
Wikenhauser spent almost a sleepless night
hand-feeding and caring for the young
charges in his hotel room, the windows
opened wide to the cold night air of Iceland
so that the birds might adjust slowly to their
new environment. The next afternoon
Wikenhauser boarded a transatlantic Ice-
landair flight back to Chicago, some five
hours distant, to be met by his wife Trish.
“We turned our car’s airconditioning up
full blast and froze all the way to Peoria,”
Wikenhauser recalls. But the pufflings liked
it. All arrived at their new zoo home in fine
fettle. For the next 30 days they were in tight
U.S. government quarantine in the zoo
nursery, and then were gingerly introduced
to their new home.
PEORIA, ILL. — Chuck Wikenhauser, Director of the Glen Oak Zoo in Peoria, III.,
looks over one of the Icelandic Puffins in his special display. Wikenhauser traveled to
Iceland a year ago to collect the chicks for what is now the only colony of Icelandic Puffins
in a U.S. zoo.