‘Welcome to the Station, Dude!’

While you’re pumping gas at the Chevron station at the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Sunset, you may hear a voice from above.

“Hey, how’s it hanging dude? Hope you’re enjoying your day.”

“Hey dude, while you’re in the store, can you buy me some tasty snacks? Some fish crackers would be quite gnarly.”

Perched on top of the convenience store is an animated, talking pelican paying homage to the area’s surfing sub-culture with his hang-10 lingo.

The bird’s beak opens and shuts, pivoting back and forth as it greets gas-getters along PCH with an array of programmed phrases.

“I thought it was a fun, cool thing to do,” said Jim Appel, the station’s owner. “It was worth the investment to do something special.”

According to Appel, the investment cost between $25,000 and $30,000, which included having a comedian and voiceover actor create the pelican’s script.

While the expressions the bird tosses out will cause customers to stop and take notice, one patron was more taken aback by the lifelike movement and appearance of the bird.

Just after the pelican had been installed, Appel said it gained some special attention from LA Animal Control.

“Seems that their office got a complaint that a pelican had been ‘stuck’ on the roof of the cashier’s booth for the past two days and that they should check it out,” Appel said. “I would have loved to have seen the expression on the Animal Control officer’s face when he or she discovered the fake bird.”

Appel said he had the bird created for the station more than a year ago as a way to get people laughing and to trademark his Chevron station. Several full-color oceanic murals also complement the property.

The pelican was programmed by Animal Makers who were able to schedule comments from the pelican to occur at different times throughout the day.

Operating on a motion sensor, the bird remains silent until he has spotted a customer to chat up with some of the gnarliest phrases along the coast.