Businessman, Officials Respond to Injured Bird on Colorado

When Allen Yap, owner of E.T.Y. Parts Imports Inc. and the vice-president of the Eagle Rock Chamber of Commerce, first saw the injured bird on the sidewalk outside his Colorado Boulevard store Friday morning, he thought it was a California condor, the largest bird in North America and one of the world’s rarest.

Yap lost no time taking a photo of the carrion eater—plus a quick video—and e-mailed the photo to Eagle Rock City Hall a block away. Lauren Ballard, a staff member at City Hall, forwarded the photo to the Los Angeles Zoo in the hope that authorities there would rescue the bird, Yap told Eagle Rock Patch.

The zoo, which helped breed and reintroduce the once-threatened California condor into the wild, responded quickly. There was just one catch. The bird, zoo officials pointed out, wasn’t a California condor but a California vulture, Yap said, adding: “The said they won’t be coming out for it.”

Eventually Los Angeles Animal Rescue officials came and took the injured vulture away.