Eagle, eagle,” somebody on the right shouted. Everybody rushed to the right side of the big glassed-in observation car. Cameras were poised.
Sure enough, there was a bald eagle perched on top of a Black Cedar next to the tracks. Regal, imperious, not even glancing at the train moving by, or at us with our faces pressed to the windows.
”That was a stuffed eagle,” said Gordon, one of the people in our group.
”Gordon, for crying out load,” said his wife. ”That is NOT a stuffed eagle. You`re in Alaska. This place is up to its neck in wild life. Remember the black bear?”
”Yeah,” said Gordon, ”that one, too. Before it moved I swear I heard somebody yelling, `cue the bear!` ”
We all laughed, but most of us knew what he was talking about. For the average tourists there is an unreality about Alaska. It`s just too good to be true. The mountains are too high and too beautiful, the air is too clean, the trees too green and the sky too deep to be believed.
The train slowed abruptly.
”Moose,” the conductor offered. ”They like to walk on the tracks when the ground`s boggy. They`re a real problem when you got your deep snow.”
Soft on birds
While everybody else was straining for a glimpse of the moose, Joyce, was looking back toward the eagle`s perch. My wife is soft on birds.
”Did you ever see anything so beautiful,” she said. ”Do you think we`ll ever get to see one up close?”
”Sure we will. This place is magic.”
The magic happened in Sitka.
We had just toured St. Michael`s Cathedral, the oldest Russian Orthodox Cathedral in the western world, when our guide asked if anybody wanted to stop by the Raptor Center.
”Oh, yes, please,” said my wife earnestly. Though I had no idea what a raptor was, judging from the excitement in her voice and the way she was gripping my arm, I figured it had to be some kind of a shopping mall.
”You interested in raptors?” the guide asked.
”We bought all the raptors we needed before we left home,” I said.
The guide scratched his beard. ”Did, huh?”
Joyce`s grip got tighter. She groaned a little. ”Raptors,” she whispered, ”are birds of prey. Like eagles.”
”Oh, that kind of raptor. Why didn`t you say so.”
The Alaska Raptor Rehabilitation Center is located on the grounds of Sitka`s Sheldon Jackson College. The Center`s Director, Jerry Deppa, a tall, scholarly looking man, introduced himself as a Wildlife Biologist.
Eagles as patients
”I`m not a doctor so all you people can just call me `Jerry`. We`ll be speaking softly while we`re in with the eagles because we`ve found if we`re gentle with them, they`re gentle with us. He assured us that the birds we would meet were used to humans and quite safe. Then, he took us into a large, partially-covered room and introduced us to the eagles, his ”patients.”
”They`re good patients, too,” he said. Never fight us when we`re trying to help them, never try to work bandages loose. They`re very smart.”
Joyce`s expression was what you might expect to see on someone looking through a nursery window. ”See how they look at us,” she whispered. ”It`s like they`re accepting us as equals. It`s really kind of flattering.”
”These are all bald eagles,” said the director. One was brown. I wanted to ask about it but since the director was introducing each bird I waited.
”Frosty, here,” he said, ”may be the most fastidious and most beautiful bird you`ll ever see. All them preen but Frosty will not allow even one feather to be out of place. His perfection probably worked against him. He was shot, along the Chilkat River, more than likely by poachers, for his beautiful plumage. Never, ever buy any souvenir that includes eagle feathers, and please pass that along to your friends.”
The director told us that the center maintained a supply of feathers the birds lose naturally, in molting. ”Those who really need them can write us. Nobody has to go out and kill an eagle to get them.”
Each bird has a name
He named each bird and told us why they`d been brought to the center. Solo had flown into a power line fracturing a wing so badly the humerus required pinning.
”We think Treader, there, broke a leg trying to catch a fish that was too big for him. He was found with only his head above water off Dall Island. Sometimes the salmon win.”
Valdessa was a victim of the Valdez oil spill at Prince William Sound. She had ingested a lot of petroleum and was so emaciated she had almost died, but she would be returning to the wild soon. Others were mostly victims of people shooting just to be shooting and trap injuries.
All the eagles had been watching the director as he spoke to us but one looked like he was really working to make eye-contact. It was the brown one.
”Buddy`s different,” said Mr. Deppa. ”He`s very young, less than 2 years old. Doesn`t have any of his white feathers yet. And he doesn`t know he`s an eagle; he thinks he`s people. Third, Buddy is made almost entirely of Twinkies, potato-chips and about every other item of junk food children have in their lunch boxes. And thereby hangs a tale.”
Buddy had just appeared one day in Kake, a small fishing village on Frederick Sound in Southeast Alaska. A very young bird, Buddy was about as untalented an eagle as anyone there had ever seen.
He couldn`t hunt and seemed to prefer walking (which even graceful eagles don`t do well) but his walking was better than his flying which looked like someone throwing a handful of feather-dusters.
When some of the fishermen put out a meal for him, he hadn`t the least idea what to do with it. The few times it was done, Buddy would look at the fishermen as if they were crazy and walk over to the school. The children thought that was fine and, apparently, so did Buddy.
Buddy understood Twinkies and he had pretty good handle on Corn-curls, potato chips, peanut butter sandwiches and just about any other kind of
”people” food.
Bonding with humans
It became increasingly clear that he`d been raised and then abandoned by people and, having bonded with humans, considered himself one and would probably never get the hang of how to be an eagle.
After a disagreement between Buddy and a little girl at the Kake Grammar School, over who owned a red rubber-ball and whether or not it was edible, the police felt they had to take action. They figured the young eagle wasn`t far from maturity and they had better take him out of circulation before puberty arrived.
After all, they reasoned, if Buddy began courting it might scare some child and his or her parents out of several years growth. Eagles are okay, but the average Alaskan doesn`t want his daughter to marry one. Buddy was arrested and sent to The Alaska Raptor Rehabilitation Center.
”He did very well in his flight training,” said Director Deppa. ”But he`ll always be with us. He`ll never learn to hunt and he`ll always be too trusting.” The director leaned toward the young bird, ”Won`t you, Buddy?”
Buddy looked the director in the eyes, opened his mouth wide and said,
”Awk.”
Several of the other eagles immediately agreed.
We learned that more than 50 percent of the sick or injured birds the center receives are returned to the wilds. The others, the ones whose injuries would make wilderness survival impossible, are found homes in the zoos of the world, where they are usually afforded ”star” status.
Joyce asked what was planned for Buddy.
”He`s special,” said Director Deppa. ”He responds very well to children and they`re crazy about him, so if we can get the money together we`re hoping to outfit a trailer and take Buddy around to schools. I don`t think anybody whose ever really met an eagle could possibly shoot it, do you?”
As we were leaving Joyce turned and said, ”Bye-bye, Buddy.”
Buddy said ”Awk.” The director just waved, smiling like a proud father. We took the state operated Alaska Ferry, the Marine Highway, back down the Inland Passage to what Alaskans call the lower 48.
The second day out, one day north of Bellingham, Wash., Joyce and I were leaning on the rail, watching an eagle fishing along the shore. One of our group who`d been watching from the prow, yelled over her shoulder, ”Gordon, you better get up here. There are a bunch of stuffed whales up ahead.”
Gordon, who`d been napping in a deck chair, jumped up. ”Hold it. I`m coming.” He bounded to the rail and raised his camera. ”Okay, cue the whales.”
