Aww, I was going to say, I think it was better than all that. When I was reading of him, trying to find out the story, I felt a bit of myself, especially after open house.

After the first day, the directors were asking me how it went, and I said I thought it went well, but I was a little disappointed that there weren't many people who seemed super interested in anything deeper than what was in front of them. But they reminded me this is just the general public, they don't really know yet what they had to be interested in, and that is why they were there.

The second day I did get more high school through 40 yr olds, and a few did ask me some solid questions, but both days I did see a lot of delight in the children's faces, and even most of the adults were surprised by a lot of facts of how the owl feathers felt or how many kinds we have. A number of people told me things they remembered from their childhoods decades ago when they saw owls. Sometimes I may see that spark light in them, and other times I might not.

Reading the reviews of the people saying they were so sad to see the pelican man not be there anymore reminded me that some people I saw yesterday may remember that moment for a very long time. If I ever left here, from DMs or comments I've gotten, a >0 number of you would probably be disappointed as well.

I looked again and was going to say Pelican Pete did his thing for x years and inspired a lot of people even if it didn't explicitly benefit the environment. But I either searched a different term or it's because I used a different search engine, but I found what happened, at least many of the pieces of what happened.

This article covers the scenario of why he likely went away. TL;DR too many people skipped the donation, and the town wouldn't promise to not destroy the area where he did the show.

So he loved doing it, the people loved him, but it's another thing jerks ruined. It just became unsustainable. The door is potentially open for a return though.

I think he did a great thing, and though there was maybe little direct impact, I think he nudged a lot of people's hearts to care about those birds. The guy himself certainly loved them to drop that much cash into those pouches every day! This time the birds are still ok, but it reminds us good people also struggle as attitudes and environments change.