The Turnbo Manuscripts
by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925
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STORY OF A GREEDY EAGLE
By S. C. Turnbo
In speaking of eagles killing deer Mr. Wilse Griffin furnished me with this account. "One day," said he, "while George Crabtree, Woodson Owen and myself were hunting on Gooleys Spring Creek just over the line in Ozark County, Mo., we were in the hills between the creek and the Arkansas state line when we noticed two deer some distance from us running at full speed with an object of some kind on one of the deer’s back. Though the two deer was going over a bald hill but we were unable to tell what it was until we saw it spread its wings to balance itself on the deer’s back. Then we recognized it as an eagle that had attacked the deer and sank its talons in the deer’s back. It was near sundown and when the two deer disappeared from view we thought it too late to follow them and returned back home. But I become a little interested as to the fate of the deer that the eagle seemed to be taking a merry ride on its back and wanted to find out whether the big bird had killed the deer or not and so I went back on the following day to investigate and after following the trail of the deer more than a quarter of a mile from where we last saw them the evening previous I found what was left of the dead deer and a bald eagle was sitting on a big rock nearby. The bird had feasted so greedily on the deer that it was not able to fly. It did its beat to rise by fluttering and flopping its wings and jumping as high as it could, but all its efforts were fruitless for it could rise only a few feet above the ground and fall back again. Its glutinous appetite had got it into serious trouble and after I had grew weary in watching its frantic efforts to make its escape, I killed it with stones."
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