Birds of a feather, stuck together.
Authorities are often called to help settle or deescalate disputes, but this might be the only time in history that police were called to break up a fight between two bald eagles. I highly doubt there’s a police code for this incident. It might seem like a job that’s better suited for animal control, yet the police were the first to respond when someone in Plymouth, Minnesota called 911 to report two bald eagles that were locked together in a road side battle.
I don’t know if this was unbridled patriotism or what, but who really calls the police because two birds are fighting? Really? Especially in Minnesota?
Mitch Martinson, a Plymouth Patrol Officer, was perplexed when he arrived and saw two of our nation’s birds entangled with one another. During battle, their talons had become locked together, and neither one of them was letting go.
Martinson said he didn’t really know how to handle the situation, but did his best with the skillset he had:
“It’s definitely a call that I’ve never had before, and we don’t train on it, so yeah I was definitely thinking outside the box. First wanted to make sure there was no injuries with their wings or beaks. I didn’t see any blood or injured wings that I could see.”
Once he checked the birds for injuries, the responding officer’s “instincts” kicked in, and by that I mean the information he absorbed from watching TV actually came in handy for once:
“From the little bit of Animal Planet that I’ve seen, I know that if you can blind them or put something over their heads, they kind of calm down.”
So, Martinson and a nearby neighbor used towels to cover up the bald eagles in order to calm them down. They managed to get their talons separated, and after another brief fight with one another, the Bald eagles eventually abandoned their fight and flew away.
You can see how it all went down in the video below:
That must have been a wild day for Mitch Martinson of the Plymouth Police Department.
But Martinson was happy to serve his community in whatever ways that he could, and honestly will never forget the day he broke up a bald eagle battle, as he later told CBS News:
“It’s one of the perks of the job is that every day is a new day and every call is different than the last, and you never know what you are going to get yourself into. And this one I’ll remember the rest of my life as one of the top ones of my career.”
Protect and serve… the bald eagles.
