Even though a species may be legally protected, they can still face danger from uncaring humans. One bird faced certain death after he was captured from the wild. Luckily, a kind soul happened to be in the right place at the right time.
This crowned eagle was captured from the forest and tied up by ropes. He was unable to fly away to safety, so he was extremely unhappy. The capturers brought the bird to a garage in Monrovia, Liberia, to sell him.
A forestry officer who was out of uniform happened to be walking by at just that moment, and he was able to help the poor creature. The man pretended he wanted to buy the bird, and he organized a setup with the sellers.
Meanwhile the officer called the Libassa Wildlife Sanctuary. Other officers came to arrest the men who were selling the eagle.
“The officer told the men he wanted to buy it and directed them to where he’d meet them with the money,” Luke Brannon, the manager of the sanctuary, told The Dodo. “He rang ahead and organized for officers to arrest them.”
The men tried to avoid the charges by claiming they had found the bird on the side of the road. They insisted that they thought it was an owl, and that it had not been captured. The evidence, however, told a different story.
The eagle’s legs had been tied together, and he had been wrapped in a canvas. This was proof enough that the bird had been smuggled. The men were taken away, while the eagle was brought to the sanctuary for treatment.
Fortunately, the only injury the bird had sustained was in one of his eyes. “Upon health checking when we got back, it was clear it had a floating ulcer on its right eye,” explained Brannon. “This would require medicated drops four times daily to heal. [But] with the eagle being extremely strong and feisty, coupled with the stress factor, it was decided once, twice daily maximum.”
The key difference between this eagle and most of the birds that the sanctuary saw was that this one’s wings were still in tact. They had not been clipped or damaged, so when the eagle’s eye finally healed he could fly to freedom.
It only took a few days for the eagle to feel much better. When the team noticed that he was moving around normally, they brought him to a larger space to test his flying skills.
Then came the big news: “It could fly well and was feeding well,” Brannon shared. This bird would be able to return home after all.
The eagle stayed with the sanctuary for 10 days before he could finally fly free. Once he was returned to the location where he had been taken, the bird let out a big screech.
And with that, he was off. This guy wasted no time in getting back to his family. His hasty recovery reminds us how important it is to find the freedom to be ourselves.
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