It was a bad night for this lovely 10-11 month old female Golden Eagle. She was apparently eating on a roadkill and was struck by a passing vehicle on the 18th. She had three strikes against her. First, she was hit at 5:30pm. That person went home and tried for hours to get someone to gather her up. Second, she was two miles inside MT which meant his G&F person couldn't cross the line, he lives in Buffalo. And third, and the worst thing, she was on the Crow Reservation. That meant instead of someone just going and rescuing her immediately, all the agencies had to be politically correct beforehand. That process didn't start until the following morning when Diane started making phone calls after the person who hit the bird remembered she was a retired bird rehabber and called her. She then called me.
It took the combined efforts of the following agencies to make her rescue happen; Joe Gilbert (WGF) in Sheridan, Brad Rogers (USFWS) in Billings, Harold Guse (FWP) in Billings, Shawn Conrad (USFWS) in Billings and Clayvin Herrera (Crow F&G). I drove up to Billings to meet Shawn around 2:30pm and was finally able to bring her to Cody for treatment that afternoon.
LEWEEZE has a broken left leg but she can still use the foot and move the leg up and down so I have very good feelings that this repair will be successful. I'll post further news on her condition and how the surgery turned out.
VERY SAD NOTE: She's gone. I found her about 6:00am this morning having a great deal of difficulty breathing. She died in my arms a few moments later. Her surgery was a success, she was standing and even ate a few rat pieces last night. What killed her was sitting alongside the road for the 17 hours it took to gather her up. Freezing temps after suffering a bad injury is almost impossible to overcome. Now that I have Clayvin's phone number it won't happen again. Fly free beautiful young lady.
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