A Florida man? Saving a bald eagle? From alligators? This is about as patriotic as it gets.
I don’t know about you, but I love a good Florida man story. They typically don’t end as well as this one does. To be frank, most have something to do with a man or woman in the Sunshine State breaking the law (like this Florida man who offered a police officer alcohol during a high speed chase).
There’s no law breaking in this story out of the Sarasota area of Florida. Instead, a man by the name of Doug Hay was busy preserving and protecting the United States of America. I know what you are thinking… one man helping this great country with a heroic act? What is this National Treasure?
I’d argue that this might as well be Nic Cage’s inspiration for the next National Treasure sequel. Doug was sitting in his Florida home when he heard something splash down in the pond near his house. As he told Fox 13, he sprung into action:
“I was in the living room and I heard a crash in the lake and I looked over and it was an eagle. It was a huge splash.”
According to Mr. Hay, the female bald eagle fell from the sky after a mid air fight with another big bird (presumably another eagle). Though the Florida man could have easily let nature take his course, he felt it was necessary to put his life on the line to save the drowning bald eagle.
There were alligators in the pond that would have surely made a meal out of the bird, and Hay didn’t want to let that happen on his watch:
“I ran out because I know they can’t swim. Threw my shirt off and my flip flops and I jumped in because I wanted to save it.”
Bald eagles can swim a bit (we saw one do a butterfly stroke not too long ago), but if they are injured, it can definitely be a struggle. Especially if they are to become waterlogged. So it is very likely that the Florida man did save the eagle’s life… much to the chagrin of his wife, Diane Hay:
“She was screaming at me… profanities. You don’t swim in these lakes. There’s a gator in there too.”
Hey, I would probably scream profanities at my significant other too if they jumped into gator-infested water to save a bird.
Doug Hay says he swam about 100 yards out in the water to where the bald eagle had splashed down. It wasn’t moving much after it hit the pond, and the Florida man even says that it had gone underwater by the time he got out to it:
“When I got out there I didn’t see her, because she had went under. Then I was looking around and she finally bobbed up. I grabbed her by the legs with my right hand, then I started doing the dog paddle to shore.”
Fortunately, Doug only suffered some scratches on his arm from the rescue mission, and wasn’t attacked by any alligators while he was in the water. And someone had contacted a professional trapper at some point, and they were there on sight to transport the bald eagle to a medical center once the Florida man got it out of the water.
It was without a doubt a dangerous swim that Doug Hay took to save the bald eagle, but he was adamant in his interview that he’d do it again if he had to:
“That would’ve been in my head the rest of my life… ‘I could have saved that bird.’ I had to do it. I just wanted to get the eagle to save it. It’s our national symbol. It’s freedom. It’s America.”
Hell yeah Doug.
The good news is that the bald eagle has since had surgery and is expected to make a full recovery. And that’s all thanks to a Florida man who was patriotic enough to not let a Bald eagle drown in the pond by his house… even if he was risking his own life to do so.
