Earlier this month, Adam Franks and his girlfriend, Claire, traveled from their home in Vancouver, Canada, to a forested plot of land in Wahta Mohawk Territory, Ontario. The remote property had been set aside years earlier by Adam’s dad as a place to build
a home, but he passed away when Adam was a teenager.
Adam hopes to fulfill his father’s dream — but in so doing, he and Claire ended up saving a life.
Living in another province, Adam doesn’t get to visit the property often. The timing of this visit, however, proved to be fateful.
Approaching the site Adam’s father had chosen to build on, he and Claire spotted a bald eagle wedged hopelessly between trunks of a tree.
“He wasn’t moving or making a sound,” Adam wrote. “The way he was suspended felt eerie, yet somehow beautiful. At first, we couldn’t tell whether he was alive. Then I noticed his eye looking directly at me. I stepped closer, and he flinched. He was alive.”
Adam and Claire then worked carefully to save his life:
Using a broken branch to gently lift the eagle from his wedged-in position, Adam and Claire managed to free him.
“It was scary, honestly; I was very caught off guard,” Adam said. “I was stunned by its beauty, but also panicked to help it get out.”
The eagle’s perilous predicament had led to injuries, but volunteers who arrived at the scene to help whisked him off to get the care he needed.
The eagle is now under the care of experts at Shades of Hope Wildlife Refuge, where they are prepared to treat him for the weeks or months it takes for him to recover.
“It's our belief that the eagle found itself in this situation due to lead poisoning,” Allison Taylor, spokesperson for the refuge, told The Dodo. “Lead poisoning can lead to mental impairment, which can cause raptors to misjudge their surroundings.”
For Adam, being in the right place at the right time to help felt like more than a coincidence.
“To me, the message was unmistakable: You’re on the right path. Keep going. Care for this land. Carry my dad’s vision forward,” Adam wrote.
And, with any luck, the eagle will one day return there, too.
“If he makes a full recovery, he will be released back in the area where he was found,” Adam wrote.
