Bald Eagle Rescue Takes on Special Meaning for Man Building on Family Land
Adam Franks and his girlfriend were walking through Wahta Mohawk Territory in Ontario when they came across something neither expected to ever see wedged between three trees: a bald eagle.
Franks said the bird was completely still and silent. So motionless was the bird that, at first, the couple thought it might have already died. Then Franks noticed its eye watching him.
He stepped closer. The eagle stared…and then flinched.
“He was alive,” Franks wrote in a Sept. 14 Instagram post documenting the ambitious rescue, made even more meaningful by an unexpected connection between the rescuer, the location, and the eagle’s place in his culture.
Help Came Across The Water
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Franks and his girlfriend, Clair, or @whatclairedoin on Instagram, managed to free the eagle from the trees. He said four women from Wahta then crossed the water by boat and helped get the bird to professional care.
“We still don’t know how he ended up there,” Franks admitted in the caption of his Instagram video, adding, “It appeared that he had fallen straight down from above, possibly after an encounter with another eagle.”
The Wahta Mohawks later confirmed that community members reported the eagle to the administration. Staff members Sarah Chaloux and Sara DeCaire traveled by boat and truck to assist with the rescue and make sure the bird received the care it needed.
By Sept. 7, the eagle had arrived at Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary. The sanctuary said X-rays were taken to examine its wings, determine the extent of any injuries, and help devise a treatment plan. It remained under close monitoring.
The rescue even came with a small coincidence. Franks realized afterward that he had been wearing a hat with a bald eagle on it the entire time. As he put it, he had apparently dressed for the occasion without knowing it. And the connections were not over yet, and only got more emotional from there.
The Discovery Had a Deeper Meaning
The place where Franks found the eagle mattered just as much to him as the animal itself.
Franks said his father died when he was 14 but had envisioned a future for that land. Franks is now working toward carrying that vision forward by building a cabin in that area. In fact, he and his girlfriend encountered the eagle while walking toward that future cabin site.
More specifically, the bird was trapped directly along a small path Franks himself had cut through the property.
Franks described the eagle encounter as deeply meaningful and connected it to Indigenous understandings of the eagle as sacred. Finding one along the exact path toward the cabin felt nothing short of auspicious.
“To me, the message was unmistakable,” he wrote.
And to the Wahta Mohawks, as described on Facebook, the whole effort was an example of “Community and care in action.”
As of Franks’ Sept. 14 update, the eagle remained in the sanctuary’s care. He said that if it makes a full recovery, the plan is to return it to the same area where it was found.
