‘He had both of his claws in her.’ Young bald eagle attacks woman at Minnesota resort
While bald eagles are a sight to behold when they are soaring through the air, the situation can be less majestic if you’re dealing with an aggressive one up close and personal.
That’s what one woman and employees at the Cascade Lodge and Restaurant in Lutsen, Minnesota, experienced first-hand on Thursday when a young bald eagle attacked.
Head kitchen manager Bernie Banks witnessed the creature go after the woman a hundred yards from the lodge and ran to the rescue, Fox 21 reported.
“I just took off my jacket and threw it over him and tried my best to get him off of her while not hurting the bird or hurting her anymore without me getting hurt,” Banks said.
“He had both of his claws in her. He was trying to get at her with his beak. I just happened toget my jacket over his head in time because he was trying. I think it would have been pretty bad if he would have latched on to her with his beak,” Banks said.
Cascade owner Thom McAleer told the Duluth News Tribune that the bird caught their attention Wednesday evening but seemed to gather more spectators early Thursday morning. The bird’s adventures were documented on the Cascade’s Facebook page.
“People were stopping their cars and walking up to it and getting within maybe 50-100 feet of the bird and it was just sitting there,” McAleer told the newspaper. “It wasn’t moving at all really. It was turning its head but it wasn’t trying to fly away or acting scared so we knew that something was not right with the bird.”
McAleer said they had called the Raptor Center in St. Paul and as they were waiting for a volunteer to arrive, the eagle attacked the woman.
“I don’t think she even saw the bird,” McAleer said. “It had kind of moved about 100 feet further down the property and somehow it just latched onto her. It just jumped and grabbed her leg with its talons, and was flapping and flapping.”
As state troopers and sheriff’s deputies tried to keep the eagle from heading out into the road, it had other things in mind, the News Tribune reported. It kept hopping on vehicles and at one point jumped onto the roof of a sheriff’s office truck and went for a ride.
The bird ended up flying away before a volunteer could get there to assess the animal, multiple outlets reported.
This story was originally published August 14, 2020 at 11:55 AM with the headline "‘He had both of his claws in her.’ Young bald eagle attacks woman at Minnesota resort."