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Monday, June 9, 2008

Beauty the Bald Eagle Gets a New Beak


Beauty the Bald Eagle was slowly starving to death after a poacher shot off her upper beak three years ago.

But thanks to a team of volunteers an ARTIFICIAL BEAK has been attached to the 15-pound (7-kilogram) bird to help her grasp food.

Nate Calvin, an engineer from Boise in Idaho, designed the new beak, which will eventually be replaced with a permanent tougher one.

Jane Fink Cantwell who found the bird scrounging for food and slowly starving at a landfill in Alaska said: "A bullet had to be removed from her curved upper beak, leaving her tongue and sinuses exposed, with a stump useless for grasping food.

"Eating with her beak was like using one chopstick. She also had trouble drinking and couldn’t preen her feathers." :'(

Despite the success of the operation, Beauty will never be released back into the wild.

Who the eff shoots a Bald Eagle?!?!?

This saddens me almost as much Inukshuk, an orphaned baby polar bear who lost her mom to hunters in Ontario. [Jezebel]

Info. and photo via The Sun.
I also saw this story on DListed.

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