The Associated Press tells a moving story about a bald eagle who has struggled with survival after a violent attack by humans:
Part of Beauty’s beak was shot off several years ago, leaving her with a stump that is useless for hunting food. A team of volunteers is working to attach an artificial beak to the disfigured bird, in an effort to keep her alive.
“For Beauty it’s like using only one chopstick to eat. It can’t be done” said biologist Jane Fink Cantwell, who operates a raptor recovery center in this Idaho Panhandle town. “She has trouble drinking. She can’t preen her feathers. That’s all about to change.”
Cantwell has spent the past two years assembling a team to design and build an artificial beak. They plan to attach it to Beauty this month. With the beak, the 7-year-old bald eagle could live to the age of 50, although not in the wild.
The odd thing to me about this heroic effort to me is how it compares to the treatment of Eight Belles after the horse won a second prize for its owners $400,000 in the Kentucky Derby. I have refrained from commenting on the horse until now because I was hoping to hear more from the owner perspective, but his latest statement concerns me even more than before:
“We have photos 50 to 70 yards from where this happened and the horse had her ears up and she was happy,” Jones told Reuters in a telephone interview on Monday.
“If this horse had anything going on with her at the time, she didn’t know it. If the horse never had a clue, there’s no way the jockey could have had a clue.”
About a quarter-mile after finishing second to Big Brown in the $2 million Derby, Eight Belles collapsed on the Churchill Downs track with two shattered ankles and was put down by lethal injection.
Compare/contrast. Innovation to save a life versus…?
If the horse was happy and did not know only moments before that she would break her legs…why not spend some of her winnings to find a way to survive the injury and help other horses prevent similar injuries or recover from them as well?
I do not claim to understand animal science or medicine, but I see the bald eagle story as inspiring while the Derby incident feels like the opposite. Why did the horse have to be put down immediately? Conventional wisdom seems to suggest that horses can survive fractures, and the owners must have health insurance. I am sure any number of experts will be called upon to explain the death, but think of the eagle and imagine a different ending for the prize money:
The hoof is a bit like a fingernail, and the onus is similar to a human trying to get around — fast — just on the middle toe of the foot.
That’s why a horse’s leg has to be repaired quickly and the horse has to put weight back on it quite soon. Otherwise, there’s just too much pressure on the leg that doesn’t have a partner, especially if that’s a foreleg, McIlwraith said.
Horses using just three legs will develop laminitis, a condition that doesn’t have a human equivalent.
It is not easy, clearly, to save a horse’s life. Science is helping but I guess the question is what would motivate a race horse owner to save an injured young horse or even give it up for adoption instead of euthanize immediately?