Dark waters, stirred by the combined forces of the remnants of Hurricane Ida and a strong northeaster, were rising, engulfing my yard and threatening to enter my little home in the Ocracoke marsh.

I had moved my truck to high ground, brought in three feral cats that lived on my deck and picked up items in the yard that might float away. There was nothing that I could do, however, that mid-November day, to slow or turn the winds that continued to blow the waters of Pamlico Sound across Ocracoke Island.

All day I watched, checking the water level as it eased up over my porch steps, hoping against hope that the wind would die off before the water came inside my house. It was a disturbing day, which included pulling on knee-high fishing boots to take the dogs for a walk, trying to find a dry sliver of sand for them to do their business, and watching my winter garden of broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage disappear under the tide.

Through it all, however, there was one bright spot, or rather a dark one, that made me smile whenever I looked out the window. Sir Poop-a-lot, the double-crested cormorant I had rescued three years before, spent the day perched on the piling near my house, wings wrapped around him as the wind tussled him about, a guardian angel trying to protect me and my home.

Okay, so I admit my imagination is overly active sometimes. The guardian angel bit may be a stretch, but there was no doubt about the cormorant being there. He stayed around all that blustery day, occasionally leaving his perch to swim out in the road and catch a fish or two. The road was no longer distinguishable from the creek that runs beside it. Then  he returned to his post near my gate.

And the water never did get in my house.

This particular cormorant had come into my life three years before, after a concerned tourist found it, injured and weak, on the beach and asked a local fisherman to capture it. The fisherman turned it over to a National Park Service ranger, and he turned it over to me, a wildlife rehabilitator.

I examined and medicated its leg, tube-fed it several doses of electrolytes, and got it a bag of finger mullet at Tradewinds Bait and Tackle Shop. A few days later, I drove it to a nearby creek and released it, hoping that it was strong enough to dive and fish. So far, this was a pretty typical rehabbing incident.

The next morning, however, the cormorant was back, begging for fish outside my gate. I took it farther away, but it was back the next day, now pecking at my pants legs. I went back to the Tradewinds and renewed my stock of mullet, thinking that perhaps the bird was not yet able to feed itself sufficiently.

It stayed all winter, coming and going several times a week. I cut down on the fish I fed it and watched it catch its own in the creek near my house. It must have watched for me from some distant perch, for I would see it sweeping down out of the sky in circles when I went outside.

Sometimes it followed me as I rode my bicycle, flapping its big wings behind me. Once I almost ran over it when it landed behind my truck.

Having never thought of cormorants as huggy loveable birds, I was amazed by the behavior of this one.

Double-crested cormorants go by the scientific name Phalacrocorax auritus, which translates as "eared bald crow." Nicknames include shag, crow duck, water turkey, lawyer, and at Ocracoke, cormol. They are among the most prolific winter residents at Ocracoke and can be seen flying across the island in long strings that resemble strands of beads from October to March.

At night they rest in huge colonies on Howard's Reef and other high shoals in Pamlico Sound, and at dawn they head out to feed in groups. According to fisherman Gene Ballance, they "set down on a school of fish and scatter them so each time some of them catch fish." Stragglers that are old or sick stay in the creeks and ditches and catch minnows.

Six species of cormorants live in North America. The double-crested is the one commonly seen in North Carolina and can be found not only at the coast but along inland lakes and rivers. They average 32 inches in length, with long necks, wickedly curved beaks, and large rounded throat patches. They are great divers and fishermen, using their wings and feet to chase fish as far as 30 feet under water.

In March of 2007, I bade farewell to Sir Poop-a-lot and moved to New Mexico. I figured that I wouldn't be seeing cormorants for a while, but I was in for a surprise. Not far from my home at Ghost Ranch in Northern New Mexico, lay the shore of a large reservoir called Abiquiu Lake. Not only did a colony of cormorants live there, they raised their families there.

They built large, messy nests in the branches of partly submerged mesquite trees which had been flooded by the lake and laid two to six pale blue eggs therein. Both parents fed the hatchlings, regurgitating fish into their throats. As they grew the young cormorants would visit each other in their trees, returning home for dinner, until they achieved independence at approximately 10 weeks. It was fun to kayak on the lake and observe the family life of these striking birds.

During the 1960s and ‘70s cormorant populations declined because of the use of the pesticide DDT, which weakened their eggshells. With DDT banned, cormorant numbers have increased until, in certain areas such as the Great Lakes, they threaten to upset the ecosystem.

While protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, double-crested cormorants are now subject to special rules in some states that allow them to be killed under certain circumstances.

Most scientists do not believe that coastal populations are causing harm, and they say that most of the fish that cormorants eat in coastal waters, such as sculpins and cutlers, are of no value to humans.

Many local commercial fishermen disagree.

Veteran fisherman Ronnie O'Neal says that "they do a lot of damage. They should let us shoot them."

Hardy Plyer, another knowledgeable Ocracoke fisherman, says "they eat an amazing amount of fish. They are protected, but this is an excellent example of the government messing up by protecting them….They are a nuisance."

David Hilton is not sure, but he agrees that they are a difficult bird to love.  He tries to get them out of his nets without hurting them, but “handling a cormorant is like trying to hold a black snake. And their beaks can be vicious.”

Despite popular opinion against them, l was delighted when during the winter I was out west, Sally Lunsford, the person renting my Ocracoke home, told me that Sir Poop-a-lot had shown up at my gate.

Why, she had wondered, was this big bird hanging around the place?

"Oh, don't worry,” the neighbors had reassured her, "that's Pat's cormorant!"

I returned to Ocracoke in September and was again thrilled when in late October, I stepped outside my gate and saw that familiar shape waiting for me. I refrained from feeding him, knowing full well now that he could feed himself, but he continued to stop by every few days.

“Why don't you train your cormorant to bring you some fish?" asked Tom Atherton, my friend and fellow employee at Tradewinds, where I had begun working part-time. He reminded me that fishermen in Japan have done just that for more than 1,000 years, a practice they call "Ukai."

They would tie a snare around the base of the birds' necks so that small fish could pass through while large fish were trapped. They would then reel the birds back in and remove the trapped fish for themselves.

 "Hah!" I laughed at Tom. "That sounds like a good idea, but Sir Poop-a-lot expects me to provide the fish."

Tom said that he saw on television that the practice had recently been outlawed, anyway, so I don't guess I'll try giving Sir Poop-a-lot lessons.

I hadn't seen the bird for a week, so I was thinking that maybe he had flown farther south, when "Nor’Ida," as folk are calling that terrible storm, struck and Sir Poop-a-lot appeared on the piling.

Where, I wondered as I watched him, were his fellow cormorants, and why was he here instead of with them?

I asked my commercial fishermen friends where cormorants usually went during bad weather, and they said out on sandbars, dredge hills, or maybe on the Leheigh near Big Foot Slough.

What could have possessed Sir Poop-a-lot to act so out of (cormorant) character?  I may never know, but it's been fun having him as part of my life for a while. 

(Note: Sir Poop-a-lot may be Lady Poop-a-lot, as it is difficult to distinguish the sexes in living cormorants.