The mighty bird had that true eagle look in his eye, and his wingspan was as majestic as ever as West Linn’s Deborah Sheaffer prepared him last week for his new home at the Portland Zoo.
“We just called him J.J. Audubon for fun,” said Sheaffer, who is operations and staff veterinarian at the Audubon Society of Portland. “They’ll probably give him a new name at the zoo.”
Whatever his name, the eagle has undergone a dramatic transformation ever since Sheaffer pulled it out of a bush last April – utterly beaten, bloody and exhausted after being attacked twice.
“It was like the eagle had given up and crawled into some ivy,” said Mike Erickson of Lake Oswego, who was the first to spot the fallen bird. “It could barely move. It made this slow, slow walk into a thick patch of ivy to get away from his attackers.”
Thanks to Erickson and Sheaffer, the eagle has his future back.
Its saga started just as the Portland Trail Blazers’ season was ending, on the last day of April in their final playoff game against the Houston Rockets. Of course, Erickson and the 25 friends he had invited to his house on Stampher Road near the Willamette River didn’t know this as they prepared for some exciting hoop action and some food off the grill........................
