The Eagle and the Goose. An eagle was observed frequently to dart towards the Missouri, and then to rise again. His evolutions attracting attention, it was observed that he was endeavouring to take a wild goose, which had alighted in the river, and which dived to avoid him ; but, on rising to get breath, was again attacked, and had again to dive in order to save himself. The chase had continued in this way some time, the goose apparently yielding, when it suddenly turned and made to the shore of Colonel Pot’s farm, where two men were at work. It there landed, and walking leisurely up to the men, permitted itself to be taken by them without an effort to escape.
The Eagle and the Wax Doll. A gentleman who kept a remarkably fine, and as he believed, an uncommonly tame eagle, discovered it one day picking out the eyes of a wax doll, the property of one of his children. After manifesting this instinctive propensity, the bird was not deemed a safe inmate for a house in which were many children, and it was immediately shot.
Desperate Rescue of their Young. A peasant resolved to rob an eagle’s nest, which he knew to be built in a small island in the beautiful lake of Killarney. He stripped himself for this purpose, and swam over when the old birds were gone ; but, on his return, while yet up to the chin in water, the old birds coming home, and missing their offspring, quickly fell on the plunderer, killed him on the spot, and rescued their young.
Children carried off by Eagles. As a gentleman was driving down the strath of Kildonan, his attention was attracted by the piercing cries of a young child, which appeared to proceed from a rocky cliff, and on looking up he saw an eagle sitting on the ledge of a projecting crag busily employed in tearing the clothes off the infant. He immediately scrambled up the hill and rescued it (more dead than alive) from the talons of the ferocious bird. The child was discovered to belong to a shepherd who resided some six miles further up the glen.
Kay relates that in one of the Orkneys, a child of a year old was seized in the talons of an eagle, and carried about four miles to its nest. The mother pursued the bird, found her child in the nest, and took it away unhurt.
In the year 1737, in the parish of Norderhougs, in Norway, a boy, somewhat more than two years old, was running from the house to his parents, who were at work in the fields at no great distance, when an eagle pounced upon him, and flew off with him in their sight, all their screams and efforts to prevent it being in vain. Anderson, in his history of Iceland, says that in that island children of four and five years of age have been sometimes taken away by eagles.
The Eagle and the Goose. An eagle was observed frequently to dart towards the Missouri, and then to rise again. His evolutions attracting attention, it was observed that he was endeavouring to take a wild goose, which had alighted in the river, and which dived to avoid him ; but, on rising to get breath, was again attacked, and had again to dive in order to save himself. The chase had continued in this way some time, the goose apparently yielding, when it suddenly turned and made to the shore of Colonel Pot’s farm, where two men were at work. It there landed, and walking leisurely up to the men, permitted itself to be taken by them without an effort to escape.
The Eagle and the Wax Doll. A gentleman who kept a remarkably fine, and as he believed, an uncommonly tame eagle, discovered it one day picking out the eyes of a wax doll, the property of one of his children. After manifesting this instinctive propensity, the bird was not deemed a safe inmate for a house in which were many children, and it was immediately shot.
Hogg, John. The parlour menagerie [signed J.H.]. 1878.