Thursday, July 26, 1956, was a routine day for the four employees at the Standard Gas Station near park headquarters. Norm Mitchell, Bill Owens and Bill Lewis went about the usual tasks of filling gas tanks, checking oil and wiping windshields.

Station manager Don Crary decided on placing a "bug bomb" in the rest rooms at about 10:00 in the morning. This, too, was routine. However, a short time later, someone saw a bird, smaller than a sparrow, with a gray breast and yellow in the wings, picking up the dead insects in the men's restroom. It was a pine siskin.

All the rest of that first day he spent getting himself into a familiar routine. When cars came into the pump block he would eat the grasshoppers that fell off the front end of the vehicles. He was decided in his tastes and wouldn't touch dragonflies.

He stayed under an Eastwood willow bush at the east edge of the filling station building. Seldom flying, he scampered along like a roadrunner. Gradually adapting himself to human beings, he climbed onto hand or fingers and took water from the cupped hand, also allowing himself to be photographed. He would even climb on to a hand and allow himself to be raised or lowered.

The crew at the station became quite attached to this accommodating chap, and it was with a feeling of losing a friend when he finally left unannounced on the 1st day of August, after having spent six days with free room and board, entertaining the public.