Beauty Gets New Beak

Beauty is her name. She is not a human being, but a bird. A majestic bald eagle. Look at her plight after a hunter shot and smashed her beautiful beak. Foxnews had a detailed report of this little eagle, which lost its beak three years ago in an illegal hunting. She was left with a vestigial lower part and tongue, using which, holding the prey and eating were difficult. She was in fact starving and couldn’t even drink water properly.

The eagle was found back in 2005 in a landfill in Alaska. With the stump of a beak, finding it difficult to drink a drop of water or even preen her plume, she was suffering. Her protector Jane Fink Cantwell soon took her to a bird recovery center in Anchorage. People hand-fed her for many days and waited for the broken beak to grow back. When it was in vain, one day Jane met Nate Calvin, an engineer. He, on seeing the plight of the little bird, decided to design an artificial beak for her.

Thus, spending 200 hours, Calvin came up with a curved part, which is now attached to the bird. A stronger part is still in design and will be attached to her soon. That will enable her function better.

We can only hope that no more animal shootings like this happen in the future. Why would we want to kill animals? Why would we want to harm them, while they don’t do any harm on us? They also have a right to live on this earth. We have already made ourselves the dominant species on planet. All other animals mostly remain in jungle without harming us in anyway. We have the whole world for ourselves. In such a case, why would human still engage in such activities? Just for fun?

Copyright © Gayatri Jayashankar 2008