A More Exciting Birthday

Well another year has come and gone and I am celebrating another birthday today. I did not really do anything special today. My boss did take me out for lunch and Michelle bought me a treat but since the weather was mostly rainy and cloudy I came home and sat around the house after work.
My most exciting birthday happened four years ago on 8-12-2007, I apologize to any long time readers who have already heard this story. It was a Sunday and since it was my birthday Michelle let me pick how we would spend the day. I decided that we would go up to Crex Meadows, in Wisconsin, and do some wildlife photography.
While driving around Crex we spotted an eagle on the ground. It is unusual for an eagle to be on the ground, unless it is on some prey and we did not see any food, so we decided to watch the bird for a while. After about 15 to 20 minutes the eagle had still not taken off so we headed over to the visitors center to let them know about the injured eagle.
Unfortunately the volunteer that was on duty was not able to help us so we decided to take matters into our own hands. We went to a store and purchased some supplies and then headed back to rustle up the eagle. The eagle did not want to go with out a fight, so when I tried to grab him he ran from me straight into a large mud puddle.
It took a while but eventually I was able to get him out of the mud and into a small crate. The mud actually wore him down a bit making it easier to handle him. So we took off from Crex with a muddy eagle in a crate on the back seat. We tried to get a hold of some Wisconsin rehaber but we could not reach any so we decided, with the blessing of someone at the Wisconsin DNR, to take him back down to The Raptor Center. At TRC they fixed up a bone in his wing, which was broken, and the next February I was able to release him back into the wild. Although most of these pictures are not quite up to my normal standard, I obviously did not take most of them, this is one of the fondest memories that I have, and that fact that it happened on my birthday made it so much more special. Eventually the weather will clear up this weekend and then perhaps I can go out and find another special memory like this one. If you would like more details on the story check out these links http://ecobirder.blogspot.com/2007/08/rollercoaster-birthday.html http://ecobirder.blogspot.com/2007/08/eagle-rescue-update.html http://ecobirder.blogspot.com/2008/03/eagle-is-set-free.html.