An eagle sized problem

The local agronomist called on me one day.  His wife was sitting in the car, and I could see she was nursing something on her lap. He asked me to come and look at it.  He said they found it in a paddock, and it couldn’t fly, but it seemed okay otherwise, and what should they do with it.  Well, I went out with him, and he opened the door, and there sitting on her lap like a very oversized chook, was a fully grown wedgetailed eagle.  Wedgetailed eagles are rather large birds.  Their bodies are over 3 feet long, and they have a wing span of up to 10 feet, so this was a VERY large chook sitting on her lap. This was also very unusual behaviour for an eagle.  While not aggressive to humans, they obviously will defend themselves if they consider themselves to be in danger, and they are superbly equipped for that role, being hunters, with curved beaks for ripping and huge talons for grasping and killing their prey.  So it was very unusual for an eagle to be sitting quietly in anyone’s lap, and I said this to the fellow.  He was amazed and thought the bird was quiet out of gratitude. I said no, this bird is very ill.  If he was feeling himself, he’d have ripped you to shreds.  You could still see the fire in his eyes, even though he was sitting sedately there, you could see he was thinking, I’ll have this pair, as soon as I feel better.   So I convinced the guy that this was a sick bird, and the best thing he could do was get it to the vet as quickly as possible.  So he left my place and drove to the vets, leaving the unusual patient with them.

The vets did their very best for him, and ran tests to see what the problem was.  Their  diagnosis was that he had been poisoned, and started the treatment accordingly.  However, as time went on, it became obvious he was deteriorating, despite their best efforts. They had to make the decision to put him to sleep, rather than have him suffer, when they got to the stage that there was no hope.

It was a sad outcome, but also a wonderful experience to be so close to such a beautiful wild bird.