Several years ago, while my husband and I lived on the southside of north Lindstrom Lake, we saw an amazing sight from our balcony. There was a beautiful bald eagle on our dock, and it was in trouble. Needless to say, I did not have a camera handy to capture the sight, but it is still clear as a bell, in my mind.
The eagle was desperately trying to shake loose the skeleton of a large fish, eighteen inches long, that was caught in it’s talons. It would hop back and forth, then shake but with no results. After trying this method for about five or ten minutes, it decided to try and fly with it over the water. However, it glided over the surface of the water, while flapping it’s wings to stay afloat, and dragged the skeleton in the water for approximately thirty feet, and then it turned around and headed back to the dock.
It was difficult for the large bird of prey to lift itself up onto the dock while dragging that cumbersome skeleton. However, the effort paid off because after some more shaking of it’s leg, the skeleton fell off and the eagle was in flight, happy to be freed from a precarious situation.
We had called the DNR but by the time they arrived, it was too late for them to see the struggling eagle but he did see the eighteen inch long skeleton.
It goes to show that if at first one method does not work in problem solving, try another, like the eagle did, because there is always a solution to every problem.
