Kids sing praises of Floyd

The students in Mrs. Ostler's second-grade class at Sandy's Sunrise Elementary School are pals with a bird they've never officially met. Only a couple of them have even seen him — or maybe it's a her — on account of his rather large living quarters, which pretty much encompass the entire 1,800 square miles of the Great Salt Lake.

But they know his name — Pink Floyd — and they know he is a flamingo, and that he happens to be the only flamingo at the Great Salt Lake.

Whenever they get the chance, they retreat to the corner of Mrs. Ostler's classroom they call "The Bird's Nest," they put on their "Friends For Floyd" T-shirts, their Pink Floyd hats, their Pink Floyd sunglasses, and they sing, at the top of their 7- and 8-year-old lungs, the official Pink Floyd song, titled "B-B-B-Brine Shrimp" (sung to the tune of "K-K-K-Katy"):

B-b-b-brine shrimp, beautiful brine shrimp, you're the only m-m-m-meal that I adore — When the m-m-m-moon shines, over the Great Salt Lake, I'll be waiting on the s-s-s-salty shore."

Trust me. Hearing it is a moment you won't soon forget.

---

I met the Pink Floyd fan club yesterday in "The Bird's Nest." School ends in two weeks at Sunrise, a year-round school, and the kids are worried. After 25 years at Sunrise, Mrs. Ostler will be moving to a new school next year. Before she leaves, they'd like to see some action on the Floyd front. For the past four years, Mrs. Ostler's second-graders have written letters, circulated petitions and lobbied legislators to turn the Great Salt Lake into a flamingo sanctuary and get Pink Floyd some sorely needed company. So far, they've gotten no positive response.

Now they're recruiting the media.

They gave me their paper chain of Pink Floyd cutouts, all 118 yards of it. They gave me their petitions and the endorsements they've received from several other elementary schools, including one they're pen pals with in New Jersey.

"Floyd's in your hands," they told me. "Don't let us down."

---

In a short time I learned a lot about the Great Salt Lake's only flamingo. Floyd busted out of the Tracy Aviary at Liberty Park about 15 years ago because someone left his cage open before his wings had been clipped. Ever since, he's been a sort of D.B. Cooper in the flamingo world. He summers at the Great Salt Lake, where he gorges himself on brine shrimp, which only makes him more pink, and winters in Montana, where he tends to lose his tan, er, pink.