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Letters: Bald eagle takes down power

Power outage caused by eagle landing on power transformer
36275sookeSooke-20140321-00227
An immature eagle with its prey caused a power outage.

We’re about three houses up from Ed Macgregor Park.

I’m writing this while my laptop battery is still chugging, as our electricity is out.

Was busy working this afternoon and heard a loud sound outside and the power went out.

I went outside and a car was pulling over and our neighbour was walking out onto his lawn and looking at something.

Sadly, what it turned out to be was a just deceased bald eagle.

I snapped a couple of pictures, mostly thinking to send to our local paper, just using my phone camera.

The veterinarian’s assistant (Otter Point Veterinary Clinic) came rushing up the street (they’re like three houses away) with a “kitty crate.” No way the bird would’ve fit in that thing, besides the fact that it was already dead.

The people who pulled their car over said they saw the eagle trying to land on the power pole transformer.

It looks like it was trying to land to eat it’s lunch, as you’ll see the duck still clutched in it’s claw.

I couldn’t believe how huge it was, seeing it up close. The picture doesn’t do any justice, except perhaps in scale  with the duck.

And it was still a juvenile, as you can tell by the colour of it, including the head not being all “white” yet.Really sad, but at least it didn’t suffer and was killed instantly.

As people gathered, a gentleman, also I believe without power, said he was contacting the chief of our local First Nations as he said that he believed they have some permissions to collect the animals and do something (ceremonial, I’d expect) with the feathers/remains. Not so certain the duck will have any ceremony/special recognition of it’s passing.

Anyhow... not to be morbid sharing a “dead animal pic,” but thinking you might find this interesting. I’d tried to return home to snap a higher quality picture with my DSLR camera, but the vet’s office was removing the animal’s body by then. So the photos are from a camera phone.

Doug Poston

Sooke