Eagle terrorises people on a New Hampshire beach (AP)
A man found an eagle's egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air. Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat on his strong golden wings. The old eagle looked up in awe. "Who's that?" he asked. "That's the eagle, the king of the birds," said his neighbour. "He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth - we're chickens." So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that's what he thought he was.
- Anthony de Mello
A bald eagle that attacked holidaymakers on a New Hampshire beach has been captured.
The bird, which has a six-foot wingspan, swooped on several terrified people in Hampton, including a young girl who was clawed by the bird. It was finally caught in a baited net on the beach in New England yesterday.
The captured eagle (AP)
The eagle was apparently attracted by people playing football and it was during a game that 3-year-old Kayla Finn was attacked on Tuesday. She was not seriously injured.
The 14-month-old bird had been released from a wildlife reserve in North Carolina and had made its way up the Atlantic coast to Hampton, reports the Telegraph. Peter MacKinnon, the town's animal control officer, said: "Other beaches have sharks but we had to be different. We had to get an aggressive eagle."
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