Maria Schleppenbach-Grogan took an unscripted trip to the Twin Cities on Sunday to help her new feathered friend
Few outdoor scenes have the ability to capture our attention as much as a majestic bald eagle gliding through a cloudless sky.
Maria Schleppenbach-Grogan can do that one better.
This past Sunday around sundown, Schleppenbach-Grogan was told by some neighbors about a large bird sitting in the tall grass in a ditch of Pleasant View Road. Curious, she went to investigate.
“My neighbor said, ‘There’s a big bird sitting on the side of the road;’ the other neighbors were like, ‘Just go get Maria,’” Schleppenbach-Grogan said. “They thought it was a hawk. I just walked down there totally thinking it was a hawk.”
What she came upon was one very large bird. Was it an injured hawk? Perhaps. But as Schleppenbach-Grogan got closer, she realized this was no ordinary winged predator, and any assumption that it was a hawk flew out the window.
“It had hopped in the ditch and I thought, ‘Oh gosh, that’s not a hawk!” I told them, that’s a young eagle!”
Schleppenbach-Grogan acted fast, going back to her place to get a large towel to wrap the bird in and protect herself as well. She said she could see the young bird hopping, but it didn’t try to fly away.
“I just walked up behind it and threw the towel over it,” she recalls. “I brought it up and got it in a kennel … it was a big bird.”
Schleppenbach-Grogan reached out to the local DNR office and confirmed it was, indeed, an eagle. What the DNR did not confirm was the bird’s estimated age, but Schleppenbach-Grogan was sure it was a relative newborn. The U of M Raptor Center confirmed it was born recently.
“I got ahold of the Raptor Center and they told me what to do — don’t feed it, don’t give it water,” she said.
Bound and determined to get the eaglet safely to the Raptor Center, Schleppenbach-Grogan left for the Twin Cities at 7 a.m. the next morning with the bird in a larger kennel right behind her in the back seat.
“They told me I didn’t have to drive all the way (to the Twin Cities) — they have volunteers that come get it; I said, ‘Are you kidding me? How many times do you get to say you saved an eaglet?’” Schleppenbach-Grogan said. “I told them I’d drive up myself.”
Schleppenbach-Grogan said the raptor’s demeanor was mellow and calm — both when she carried it from the ditch and during the long drive to the Cities — that she named it “Pleasant.”
“It was awful quiet, not stressed at all,” she said. “I just talked to it; it just kind of looked at me. It was pretty docile. Maybe it didn’t know any better to be afraid.”
Schleppenbach-Grogan surmised that the eaglet — estimated to be about 6 months old — wasn’t quite ready to fledge, which is why it ended up in a ditch.
“It was really awesome,” Schleppenbach-Grogan added. “I couldn’t believe I had this eagle in my house — and I got to hold it!”
