It is a stagnant slough of parasite-filled irrigation water that turns a swimmer's skin itchy and red. More insects than in the Everglades feast on visitors' blood near the shoreline, and motor-boaters pick bugs from their teeth. The fish have hideous yellow grubs in their fillets, and the scraggly surrounding sagebrush desert floor crawls with enough vicious fire ants to make camping an extreme sport. Sudden windstorms swamp boats trying to trailer and send campers sprinting after uprooted dome tents cartwheel across the sage flat. Which Pelican Lake you get depends on the day.
Many people come to fish, some come for the birds, and all enjoy both.
In spring, the water is clear and the reed patches are large aquariums full of platter-shaped bluegill, hyperactive little bass and the occasional hulking lunker cruising subsurface through the reeds. But the birds are the real extravaganza. The Kung Fu theater mating display of the coots is a first-rate act. Like the hyena, they are an animal that nature seemed to not finish. Below a stumpy rear end are strange flappy feet that aren't quite webbed.