Sorry;
I can’t get the pics to paste but this is a beautiful Bald Eagle.
This is the kind of story you need when it seems like the world is spiraling out of control.
Not many people get a picture of this proud bird snuggled up next to them!
Freedom and Jeff
Freedom and I have been together 11 years this summer.
She came in as a baby in 1998 with two broken wings.
Her left wing doesn’t open all the way even after surgery,
it was broken in 4 places. She’s my baby.
When Freedom came in, she could not stand and both wings were broken.
She was emaciated and covered in lice.
We made the decision to give her a chance at life, so I took her to the vet’s office.
From then on, I was always around her.
We had her in a huge dog carrier with the top off, and it was loaded
up with shredded newspaper for her to lay in.
I used to sit and talk to her, urging her to live, to fight;
and she would lay there looking at me with those big brown eyes.
We also had to tube feed her for weeks.
This went on for 4-6 weeks, and by then she still couldn’t stand.
It got to the point where the decision was made to euthanize
her if she couldn’t stand in a week.
You know you don’t want to cross that line between
torture and rehab, and it looked like death was winning.
She was going to be put down that Friday, and I was
supposed to come in on that Thursday afternoon.
I didn’t want to go to the center that Thursday,
because I couldn’t bear the thought of her being euthanized;
but I went anyway, and when I walked in everyone was grinning from ear to ear.
I went immediately back to her cage;
and there she was, standing on her own,
a big beautiful eagle. She was ready to live.
I was just about in tears by then.
That was a very good day. We knew she could never fly,
so the director asked me to glove train her.
I got her used to the glove, and then to jesses,
and we started doing education programs for schools in western Washington.
We wound up in the newspapers, rad