A truck driver called for help after his rescue of an injured bird led to an eagle running loose in cab in South Dakota earlier this month.
The truck driver rescued the golden eagle earlier in the day after seeing it get hit by another tractor trailer. He stopped and wrapped the stunned eagle in a blanket before bringing it into his cab and continuing on his route.
Later that day, the driver made a stop in Belle Fourche, South Dakota and left his cab. When the driver returned to the truck, he found the eagle had escaped the blanket and was perched on his dashboard. Unsure what to do, the trucker called police, who contacted Belle Fourche Animal Control, reported News Center 1.
“So I put on my jacket and responded and when I arrived there was a golden eagle in the cab. And then we began to figure out how we were going to get it out of the cab safely and be able to get it to the Black Hills Raptors, so it could be helped,” said Clint Haffner, who works on code enforcement and animal control for the Belle Fourche Police Department.
Haffner then worked on wrangling the eagle while his partner contacted the Black Hills Raptor Center. The whole ordeal took around two hours.
Workers at the Black Hills Raptor Center say that the bird was in surprisingly good condition when it arrived in their care. They say that there are still a few more tests to run on the bird before they release in back into the wild, but they expect the bird to make a full recovery.