Rupert's Passing Is More Than Just a Sad Swan Song

Rupert, how we loved ye.....
Rupert the Black Swan, Newport Harbor's most beloved resident, will get a fitting send-off.

By Mike Anton, L.A. Times (Staff Writer)
September 20, 2006

It has been a week since the untimely death of Newport Harbor's most beloved resident, and people there remain shaken. Not due to the particularly gruesome end — mowed down by a fast-moving sheriff's patrol boat — but because Rupert's many friends simply aren't ready to let go.

Said Jim Mahoney, owner of a gondola cruise company. "He was a celebrity in this harbor. Next to John Wayne, he was the most famous creature who ever lived in Newport Beach."

Indeed, Rupert the Black Swan was no ordinary fowl.

An Australian swan, he ruled the roost in Newport Harbor since he mysteriously arrived in the early 1990s, endearing himself to locals, enchanting tourists, charging yachts and going after swimmers who made the mistake of wearing red bathing suits.

Rupert hated the color red. He also was Newport's unofficial mascot, looked after by everyone, including the same Harbor Patrol deputies who accidentally killed him Sept. 13 while responding — in their red boat — to a report of a dead body.

Rupert was about 16 and left no survivors that anyone is aware of.

In death, he remains as large as he did in life.

A planned "paddle out" memorial service tentatively scheduled for Sept. 30 is expected to draw dozens of boaters, kayakers and canoeists who will escort Rupert's cremated remains to a burial at sea.

"I knew people loved him, but I had no idea how many," said Gay Wassall-Kelly, a 66-year-old bay-front homeowner who fed and looked after Rupert for most of the swan's time in Newport Beach. "People knew Rupert from one end of the harbor to the other."

Wassall-Kelly chronicled Rupert's activities in the weekly Balboa Beacon newspaper, which she publishes.

A final sighting dispatch appeared on Page 2 recently: Balboa Peninsula, 4 p.m. on Thursday here comes Rupert the Royal strutting up on the beach at 10th & Bay looking around, sticks his beak up in the air and takes (off) swimming again.

"In the latest issue, he's the whole front page," Wassall-Kelly said. "I'm putting it together now, and I can't stop crying."

In the past week, Wassall-Kelly has received scores of phone calls, cards and e-mails expressing condolences; one woman called from Utah, where she was on vacation. People left flowers on her doorstep.

Pamela Goode, who runs a harbor cruise company, left red carnations.

"Rupert was a regular with me," Goode said, noting customers were amazed at how he responded when called and ate wheat grass seed and drank bottled water out of her hand. "It was like, 'Is he on the payroll?' "

Rupert's outgoing personality won people over. His fearlessness got him into trouble. On several occasions, the 15-pound bird with the 5-foot wingspan was rescued after being entangled in fishing line or impaled by fish hooks.

In 2000, he nearly died after being exposed to diesel fuel. Two years later, his mate, Pearl, died after being similarly exposed.

"After she died, he was going around the harbor calling for her," said Debbie McGuire, wildlife director at the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach, who treated both of them.

Eventually, Rupert was brought in to see Pearl. McGuire said it offered him closure. "He was kind of mopey after that," she said. "They were inseparable."

McGuire is helping coordinate Rupert's memorial service, at which Newport's Imua Outrigger Canoe Club plans to conduct a traditional Polynesian burial service, which will include prayers and dropping leis into the sea.

About two dozen other boat owners have expressed interest in joining the procession, a number McGuire predicts will grow.

"I'm afraid it might get quite large," she said. "He's going to get a bigger memorial service than I will ever have."

Rupert, R.I.P.

O.C. Patrol Boat Kills Harbor's Black Swan

Craft hitting Rupert, a Newport fixture for more than two decades, was on its way to the site where a body was found.

Los Angles Times September 14, 2006: September 14, 2006:

A Harbor Patrol boat speeding to where a woman's body had been found Wednesday inadvertently ran over and killed Rupert, the black swan of Newport Harbor whose misadventures with fishing lines and burning boats made him a local legend for more than two decades.

The body of the unidentified woman was found wrapped in a blanket and floating off the dock of the Newport Harbor Yacht Club about 4:15 p.m., said Sgt. Bill Hartford, a spokesman for the Newport Beach Police Department.

"Right now it's being investigated as a probable homicide," Hartford said. The body was first reported by a dock worker at the club.

As police and coroner's examiners began their investigation, harbor denizens — unaware of the woman's death — were mourning the loss of the bird they considered an icon.

"Everybody in Newport Harbor knows him," Elizabeth Barnes, 42, said of the big Australian swan reputed to have once been a pet.

Over the years, Rupert's antics attracted notoriety. Velvety-rich black with a bright red beak, the 15-pound bird was known for chasing lifeguards, honking at boaters and causing at least one terrified pair of canoeists to capsize.

He was impaled by fishhooks, routinely swam toward burning boats, was nearly strangled by fishing line and once was found near death after coming upon a diesel fuel spill.

Several years ago, Rupert's longtime mate, Pearl, died under mysterious circumstances, prompting locals to initiate a fund drive to buy him a new wife. "He'd been really depressed," Barnes said.

On Wednesday afternoon, Perry Emsiek, 16, was in a sailboat near the Balboa Yacht Club practicing for a race when she saw the Orange County Harbor Patrol speed by. She said later,

I looked up, and Rupert was in their wake. We just kept looking and didn't see him pop back up, so we sailed over there, and he was floating upside down. There was blood everywhere in the water; it looked like he was pretty cut up.

Some familiar with the bird's habits speculated that he might have been drawn by the patrol boat's bright red color, which he seemed compelled to chase.

"He kind of got sucked under," said Sgt. David Ginther of the Harbor Patrol. "We all basically loved Rupert; he was part of the patrol."

Deadly, Intentional Ignorance on Guns

Editorial in the Los Angeles Times

The Bush administration has blocked collecting data on gun sales and crime. Now Congress wants to go even further:

Two years ago this month, the federal ban on assault weapons expired. Since then, sales of such weapons have almost certainly increased, and the number of crimes in which they have been used has undoubtedly risen. Unfortunately, there's no way to know for sure. That's because the public and law enforcement agencies no longer have access to information they could routinely get just a few years ago.

A decade ago, the federal government was beginning to make some progress in making information about crime and guns more widely available. During the Clinton administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms started analyzing its vast database for the first time and in 2000 released its "Commerce in Firearms" report. This report — which was supposed to be issued annually — was full of information about gun sales as well as sales patterns of weapons used to commit crimes.

Armed with that information, federal and local law enforcement began cracking down on suspect dealers and shifting more resources to areas with disproportionally high levels of gun crimes. The federal government also began collecting information from 40 cities nationwide about their gun crimes and looking for helpful patterns in the data.

Today, such information is no longer available. In 2003, federal lawmakers slipped in a provision to an appropriations bill that bars the ATF from spending money to analyze its gun-crime database or making any data available to the public. The federal government also has stopped collecting cities' gun-crime data.

Congress is now intent on going a step further. This month, it's expected to vote on a package of bills that would make it harder to track other kinds of information. One would bar the federal government from releasing gun-crime data of any kind. Another would make it a felony for a law enforcement agency to share information about gun data with another jurisdiction. (This would make it a crime for a police officer in Los Angeles who wanted to pass along a tip about a gun crime to police in Long Beach.)

The gun industry says this kind of information has no value to the public at large and that law enforcement agencies could use it to harass dealers. That's nonsense. What they're probably worried about is that such information could show how to make gun-control laws more effective.

New Developments in the Valerie Plame Case

Mr. Armitage knew about Ms. Wilson’s C.I.A. role only because of a memorandum that Mr. Libby had commissioned as part of an effort to rebut criticism of the White House by her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV.

her identity had been disclosed in the Novak column as part of a campaign to undermine her husband.

Mr. Armitage spoke with Mr. Novak on July 8, 2003, those familiar with Mr. Armitage’s actions said. Mr. Armitage did not know Mr. Novak, but agreed to meet with the columnist as a favor for a mutual friend, Kenneth M. Duberstein, a White House chief of staff during Ronald Reagan’s administration. At the conclusion of a general foreign policy discussion, Mr. Armitage said in reply to a question that Ms. Wilson might have had a role in arranging her husband’s trip to Niger.

At the time of the offhand conversation about the Niger trip, Mr. Armitage was not aware of Ms. Wilson’s undercover status, those familiar with his actions said. The mention of Ms. Wilson was brief. Mr. Armitage did not believe he used her name, those aware of his actions said.

On Oct. 1, 2003, Mr. Armitage was up at 4 a.m. for a predawn workout when he read a second article by Mr. Novak in which he described his primary source for his earlier column about Ms. Wilson as “no partisan gunslinger.” Mr. Armitage realized with alarm that that could only be a reference to him, according to people familiar with his role. He waited until Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, an old friend, was awake, then telephoned him. They discussed the matter with the top State Department lawyer, William H. Taft IV.

Mr. Armitage had prepared a resignation letter, his associates said. But he stayed on the job because State Department officials advised that his sudden departure could lead to the disclosure of his role in the leak, the people aware of his actions said.

But Mr. Fitzgerald did obtain the indictment of Mr. Libby on charges that he had untruthfully testified to a grand jury and federal agents when he said he learned about Ms. Wilson’s role at the C.I.A. from reporters rather than from several officials, including Mr. Cheney.