Where Eagles dare now
Bald eagles. Big, feisty, fighting creatures. Lousy fathers sometimes.
They're like your cousin Richie, is what they are. This is why you hope Richie isn't showing up for your aunt's wake. He'll show up drunk and want to fight your cousin Nelson.
Richie has kids in your town, and the two nearest towns, the ones close enough to be easily reached by public transportation.
Richie doesn't see the kids, and he doesn't send the child support because a certain kind of man will work harder at conception than he will at any other facet of carrying on the species.
The best you can say about Richie as a father is that he has a very strong procreational drive, and he hasn't actually eaten one of his kids yet.
So, Richie is a better dad than at least one bald eagle.
Down in West Virginia, an unnamed bald eagle father ate one of his babies.
The big bird was being watched by the National Conservation Training Center. Richie is being watched by family court, a probation officer and your state's Department of Children and Family Services. The center was hoping for a better outcome. So is Richie's probation officer and the woman from Children and Family Services.
The conservation people said that just prior to the eating, the eagle “seemed confused,” and “was rough with the eaglet,” phrases echoed by at least one criminal incident report involving Richie's kids, or the kids of the woman he was living with a couple years ago.
The male eagle that did the baby-eating didn't always live with that particular female eagle. There was another male living there, but he left, and the new eagle moved in quick. Richie did the same thing with a woman who lived in an A-frame over by where they park the school buses at night.
We make cartoons and Christmas cards about animals.
“Happy Bear-thday to ewe!” the cartoon bear says, hugging a happy, cuddly sheep. They're friends. It's your birthday.
There are no baby-eating eagles on birthday cards, and no Richies either.
What are you gonna put on a birthday card, a picture of Richie in his saggy pants muttering, “I got Percocets. Wanna party on your birthday?”
Penguins mate for life. Richie doesn't. Once you wade into the dynamics of real animal and human life, you long for the bear and the sheep on the birthday card.
A journalist friend of mine alerted me to the eagle story, and she pointed out that, beneath the story, a clever genius had commented, “Biden's America!”
That is probably sadder than either the eagle story or Richie's life. Face it, the eagle isn't likely to do that again, and Richie may make it all the way through rehab this time, get his GED and find a job on a construction crew. Happens all the time.
The man or woman who chooses to write “Biden's America!” beneath a story about animal behavior is not going to get any better, and may in time storm a public building. That person is the eagle who knows better. He's Richie with a mind un-fogged by drugs. He or she is an American who doesn't believe in birthday cards anymore, or at the very least wants every birthday card to feature a picture of a bloody, aborted fetus and a triumphant American flag.
Richie, the bloody-beaked eagle and the commenters are the rebus of America in a time of Percocet and patriotism.
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