He was found dazed in a mountain bush in 1967, hanging upside down with an injured wing and smelling like rotten fish -- a rare male California condor, a fledgling member of a nearly extinct species.
He was a wreck, and the ornithologists who found him in a canyon north of Ojai speculated that he was also emotionally troubled. Yet Topatopa, named for the mountain range where he was found, was whisked away to the Los Angeles Zoo in the hope that his species, whose numbers had dwindled to a mere 22, could find survival in captivity.
Topa, as he is known for short, lived alone in a cage for the next 20 years, devoid of the socialization needed to learn the basics of condor life. As a teenager, he courted tree stumps and tufts of grass and tried to mate with sticks and rocks. His first encounter with a female was disastrous. He didn't know what to do. She beat him to a pulp.
All that changed when he was paired with Malibu, a mature and aggressive female California condor hatched in captivity at San Diego Wild Animal Park. Malibu was determined to make a man out of him. When Topa started strutting his stuff to inanimate objects, Malibu scooted underneath the tail feathers of his 3-foot-tall frame. Over time, Topa got the hang of it.
Now he is a legend among condors -- virile and strong, the father of a new generation. This year, the condor who has spent his entire life shielded from the public and highly protected behind chain-link fences celebrates his 43rd birthday. Like Seabiscuit -- the pot-bellied, bow-legged racehorse who overcame his weaknesses to become a champion and a stud -- Topa embodies the underdog myth for raptor specialists and condor enthusiasts.
His stud book has become legendary: 21 chicks sired since 1993. "He came in as a fledgling and went from 1967 to 1982 without seeing a female of his species -- you know what that could do to a human male," mused Noel Snyder, retired field biologist and former head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's condor recovery team. "He was terribly screwed up behaviorally."
Topa's improbable story continues to lift the spirits of his keepers at the zoo, where he and Malibu share serene digs furnished with perches and nesting boxes and bristling with closed-circuit surveillance cameras.
Topa and Malibu, along with 17 other California condors housed in separate enclosures at the zoo, "are pampered, have great medical plans and enjoy meals of rats, rabbits and horse meat served up the way they like them, fresh," said Susie Kasielke, curator of birds.
