Have you ever heard of an eagle trying to take off with a toddler? Old newspapers are filled with some strange accounts, especially when it comes to animals. In this account, which comes from The Rice Belt Journal in 1902, an eagle swooped down and tried to make off with a two year old boy. It might have succeeded in causing more serious injury if the child’s mother had not been there to fight off the bird.
Fought With an Eagle.
A woman named Callahan, living at Carmel, Penn., had a desperate fight with an eagle which was trying to carry away her two-year-old child. The child’s face and hands were torn by the bird’s talons and Mrs. Callahan was seriously pecked before she succeeded in driving off the big bird.
The child had wandered into a clearing near the house, and soon afterward Mrs. Callahan heard her screaming. From the door of her home the frightened mother beheld the monster bird pecking, clawing and flapping the little one who, with her hands and arms was trying to break away from her antagonist.
Once the bird caught the child’s dress in its talons and prepared to bear it aloft, but the child’s struggles compelled the bird to let go. The frightened mother secured a rifle and ran to the rescue of her child. She dared not shoot, but with the butt of the gun she ran screaming toward the eagle. It was not to be driven off without a struggle.
It let go of the child and turned its attention to the parent. The bird flew into the woman’s face and pecked her eyes and nose, but with a well directed blow from the club the eagle dropped to the ground, and after a moment’s scrambling took to the air and went flying away. It is said that during the past summer this eagle has carried away several pigs and that once before it had made an attack upon a child. Mrs. Callahan says that the bird was five or six feet from tip to tip of wing, and that its talons were almost razor like in their sharpness. [Source]
