Idaho team readies artificial beak for wounded bald eagle (named Beauty)

[Omaha Steve]

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/AmazingAnimals/wireStory?id=4785848


Volunteers in Idaho hope prosthesis will replace eagle's beak lost to gunshot
By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS Associated Press Writer
ST. MARIES, Idaho May 5, 2008 (AP)

She has been named Beauty, though this eagle is anything but. Part of Beauty's beak was shot off several years ago, leaving her with a stump that is useless for hunting food. A team of volunteers is working to attach an artificial beak to the disfigured bird, in an effort to keep her alive.

"For Beauty it's like using only one chopstick to eat. It can't be done" said biologist Jane Fink Cantwell, who operates a raptor recovery center in this Idaho Panhandle town. "She has trouble drinking. She can't preen her feathers. That's all about to change."

Cantwell has spent the past two years assembling a team to design and build an artificial beak. They plan to attach it to Beauty this month. With the beak, the 7-year-old bald eagle could live to the age of 50, although not in the wild.

"She could not survive in the wild without human intervention," Cantwell said.


Beauty, a rescued Alaskan bald eagle, sits in her pen at a raptor recovery center near St. Marie's, Idaho, Wednesday, April 23, 2008. A surgery in May 2008 will provide Beauty with a new artificial beak, to replace the one damaged by a gunshot wound.
(Young Kwak/AP Photo)
More Photos

The 15-pound eagle was found in 2005 scrounging for food and slowly starving to death at a landfill in Alaska. Most of her curved upper beak had been shot away, leaving her tongue and sinuses exposed. She could not clutch or tear at food.

Beauty was taken to a bird recovery center in Anchorage, where she was hand-fed for two years while her caretakers waited in vain for a new beak to grow.

FULL 3 page story at link.

[evlbstrd]

1. That's some good health insurance.

[democrank]

2. Thank goodness for the kindness in this world.

~PEACE~

[Ghost in the Machine]

3. EEEK! They're playing God and upsetting the balance of Nature!

Didn't they *know* it was God's *plan* for that Eagle to die? Survival of the fittest and all that, ya know. Now we're gonna have to toss a virgin into a volcano to restore the Natural Order of Things. Do I *really* need the sarcasm thingy?

[jmowreader]

14. It wasn't God's plan for it to get its face shot off, either

So...God's plan for the eagle to die will just have to be thwarted.

And on that "tossing a virgin into a volcano" thing...I watch these movies that feature a virgin talking to some guy about how she's going to be the starring attraction at a Virgin Sacrificing Ceremony tomorrow night. Oh-kay...you've got a Genuine Virgin sitting there going on and on about how that damned Virginity is going to cause her to be thrown into a volcano, and the dumbass guy never suggests that a simple twenty-minute roll in the hay would solve her current problem. Now why is that?

[Dr Fate]

4. I'd like to get a hold of the jerk that would shoot an eagle. n/t

n/t

[flvegan]

5. Who the fuck shot a bald eagle?

Some people just suck. Like a big black hole, they SUCK.

Anyway, thanks for the kindness of these folks working to improve this bird's life, and to those that will care for her forever.

[malaise]

6. One sick fuck

Where's Cheney?

[flvegan]

7. Cheney is too shitty a shot

though a shot in the face is his style.

:thumbsup:

[TexasObserver]

8. Let the eeeeeeeeeea-gle soarrrrrrrrrr!!

ashcroft

[maddezmom]

9. what the hell is wrong with some people

:(

[Omaha Steve]

10. Kick

Hoping for R #5.

[Sheets of Easter]

11. It's nice to read a good news story every now and then.

edit- In a way, it's oddly allegorical.

[jmowreader]

12. This is wild as shit, folks...

St. Maries is my home town. I didn't know they opened a raptor recovery center there, but it's the perfect place for one: Lake Chatcolet, which is just a few miles west of St. Maries, is FULL of raptors. The railroad put a lot of log pilings in the lake back in the late 1800s-early 1900s time frame, then someone put boards on top of the pilings as raptor nests. Now you've got every kind of raptor living out there--eagles, hawks, you name it and if it eats fish it's living on that lake.

[jmowreader]

13. Here's the center's website if anyone wants to see it...

http://www.birdsofpreynorthwest.org/

The headquarters for this group is in Coeur d'Alene, which is the Big City in that part of Idaho (it's not very big, at 34,514 in 2006). It makes sense to me they'd put the clinic in a town that's hard to get to--you wouldn't want people just dropping by to look at all the sick birds.

[Summer93]

15. Recovery

If it will be possible for a new beak to be fastened to what is left of the old one enabling the bird to eat why would it be necessary for it to be kept in captivity?

Does it have other injuries that prevent it from flying?

[Sheets of Easter]

16. It will be able to eat, but won't have the full capacity of its original beak.

It'll be suitable for hand-feeding in captivity, but won't be able to tear into prey as it did in the wild.