Burrowing cats

[helen99]

As you may have heard, the bald eagle at the Washinton DC national zoo died on the 4th of July. The death is currently under investigation.

The following articles attribute the death to Burrowing Cats. I did a search on Google to see if I could find any instances of Burrowing Cats (besides these articles), and you know what? I couldn't find any! This does not mean they don't exist (mine certainly burrow under the covers), but still...

This is about the 10th death at the National zoo. As a conspiracy theorist, I am forced to suspect there's more to this than meets the eye. Like maybe a disgruntled employee wanted someone's job, didn't get it, and is trying to make someone look bad by killing the animals. Or maybe there is a psycho on staff. Or maybe they're being poisoned with Spider Milk. Or something. But I don't think it's Burrowing Cats. No, no I don't.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13678-2003Jul5.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23447-2003Jul7.html

Comments

[stormcat.livejournal.com]

If the neck was not broken and the damage was not inflicted postmortem... then there were at least two people involved, one to hold the neck and claws of a terrified eagle and the other to inflict the damage.

Hm. The poor bird was alive, you're right; it was found badly injured and died about ten the next morning, not found dead.

The eagle wasn't capable of flight, incidentally, not as wild eagles are. I saw it when I went to the zoo on a date once. It'd had a broken wing. It could flutter around and sort of do extended gliding hops, but the wing was... badly injured. That may have even been the eagle with the amputated wing, I can't remember if that was the Baltimore or DC zoo.

Re:

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

I notice that at least one article which went into detail about the birds injuries said that they were multiple puncture wounds and lacerations to the bird's abdomen. It sounds to me like someone went at it with a knife. And they wouldn't necessarily have needed two people... one guy with a heavy leather glove suitable for handling raptors could have held it by the legs while stabbing it with the knife in his other hand. It would have struggled a lot, but a few good stabs and it probably wouldn't have had a ton of fight left in it. At which point the killer probably would have dropped it and left. I would surmise that any bite wounds from a feral cat may have come afterwards, while the bird was already lying on the ground and dying.

If the bird was a permanent cripple with a broken wing, then it being caught on the ground by a predator is even more suspicious in my opinion... usually raptors with broken wings like that are kept in pens where they have ramps and platforms they can walk up to hop up into a branch or constructed perch of some sort. Their talons are not really built for extended time walking on the ground, so without such a setup it could have developed problems with the pads of its feet. That's avoided by giving it access to a branch-like object it can wrap its talons around and perch on.