Bird Attack

ZOOM!

Suddenly, there they were, just ahead in a clearing. Two teenage creeps sitting in the back of a pickup truck. One guy had a blond ponytail.

The other one wore a baseball cap. They were a hundred yards away, like being all the way down a football field, but my eagle eyes were so good I could count their eyelashes.

The guy with the ponytail had the rifle. The other guy was drinking a beer. They were still scanning the skies, looking for us.

Guess what, morons? I thought as we raced at them. We're not up there anymore. We're right here . . .

In ...

Your. . .

FACE!

They didn't even have enough time to look surprised before we struck.

As a bald eagle, I was the biggest of the five of us. I could carry the heaviest load. I raked my talons forward.

I opened them wide.

"Tsseeeeeer!"

Tobias's hawk let loose an intimidating shriek.

My talons hit the gun barrel and closed on it.

Tobias slashed the ponytail guy's head with his own talons. Ponytail shouted in pain and surprise and loosened his grip on the rifle.

"Hey!" the second guy yelled.

Zoom!

I was out of there with the rifle in my talons.

With the additional weight of the rifle, it was a struggle getting any altitude.

"That bird has your gun, Chester! And that other one stole my beer!"

I glanced over and saw Marco. At least I think it was Marco. He had the beer can in his talons, half-crumpled.

<They're way too young to be drinking,> Marco said in his most parent-like voice. I heard the ponytail guy complaining down below.

"That ain't right. It ain't right that no bird should take my rifle like that."

I caught a little breeze and gained just enough altitude to get above the trees. But I was having a hard time. My wings were beating the still, dead air of the woods and not getting very much lift. I scraped the top of a tall pine tree and emerged from the woods, still flapping hard to carry the weight of the rifle, I made it out toward the beach, over the low cliffs at the water's edge.

The blessed thermals were there. They lifted me up, up and out over the water. I relaxed, letting the warm wind carry me higher.

I dropped the rifle about a mile out in the ocean. I figured any jerk who would shoot at a bald eagle didn't need a gun. Marco dropped the beer with amazing precision right into a trash barrel. He looked as proud as he would have if he'd just thrown the winning basket in the NBA championship.