Sgt. Nevis had a face full of stitches Friday morning, but to those who love him, the 650-pound sea lion had never looked more handsome.

"You got a brand new face! Good boy!" cried Dianne Cameron, a marine mammal supervisor at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, as Sgt. Nevis was wheeled out of surgery to a round of applause.

Until Friday, Sgt. Nevis had two gaping holes in his nose - the entry and exit wounds of a gunshot fired by a fisherman in November. The wounds prevented him from diving because his nose would fill with water, so he was starving and 300 pounds underweight when rescuers finally corralled him in December at Knights Landing, a delta community in Yolo County.

But on Friday, Sgt. Nevis - named for Michael Nevis, the Yolo County sheriff's animal control officer who helped rescue him - underwent radical surgery to reconstruct his furry, whiskery face in what's believed to be the first plastic surgery on a sea lion.

"He did fantastic. We are elated," said Dr. Bill Van Bonn, a veterinarian from the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, who assisted in the operation. "Although the anesthesia took a little longer than we wanted."

Sgt. Nevis was wheeled in a steel cage to the vet clinic at Discovery Kingdom around 10 a.m. Friday. Doctors gave him an injection of Versed, a sedative given to humans before surgery. Then they waited. And waited.

Sgt. Nevis took a good 45 minutes to finally nod off. But doctors were so afraid of waking him they decided to keep him in the cage and operate on him there. With a dozen technicians holding flashlights and handing over instruments, doctors peeled back the skin on his face and stitched it back together, closing the quarter-sized holes on his nose with extra-thick, dissolvable sutures.

By noon, Sgt. Nevis was awake, lolling his head upwards and enjoying a dousing of cold water from a garden hose. Staff wheeled him back to the park's Seal Cove, where he'll recuperate in a quiet area for a few days before rejoining his cove-mates and entertaining the public.

No one was happier than the plastic surgeon, Dr. Praful Ramenini, a Washington, D.C., surgeon who specializes in gunshot wounds and volunteered his services.

"I always wanted to be a vet, but my parents forced me to go to medical school," said Ramenini, who heard about Sgt. Nevis' plight from friends. "I'm a big animal lover. If I can do anything to help, I will."

Sgt. Nevis' saga began last year, when he was known as Sammy to denizens of the Sacramento River. Bystanders along the river and in Old Town Sacramento, where Sammy often hauled onto the docks, reported his gunshot wounds to wildlife officials, but the wily pinniped eluded rescuers for months.

He even turned up at Pier 39 in San Francisco, but vanished when rescuers showed up.

On Dec. 5, a crew from the Marine Mammal Center finally trapped him on a dock at Knights Landing and brought him to Sausalito for treatment. Within 10 months he had regained 300 pounds, had been moved to a permanent home at Discovery Kingdom and was healthy enough to undergo surgery.

Meanwhile, state game wardens arrested North Highlands fisherman Larry Allen Legans, 44, after a witness reported seeing him fire at the sea lion in the Sacramento River in November.

Eighteen sea lions have turned up in the past year at the Marine Mammal Center with gunshot wounds, spokesman Jim Oswald said.

"Sea lions are viewed as a nuisance by some people, so they shoot them," Dr. Van Bonn said. "They're noisy, they smell, they haul out on docks, they eat and chase fish. That's viewed as obnoxious by some people."

This wasn't Sgt. Nevis' first run-in with a shotgun. He had been shot at least three or four times previously, veterinarians discovered when they examined him at the Marine Mammal Center.

But that didn't stop him from liking people. "He's very personable, very laid back," said Discovery Kingdom spokesman Lee Munro. "Although being that personable is probably what got him into trouble."