‘I thought she’d like a lasagna’: Rescuer lures injured bald eagle from B.C. dump

It’s likely the last dinner you want after a long weekday, but a frozen lasagna was exactly what Ed Butler used last week to rescue a juvenile bald eagle from a B.C. landfill.

Butler, who is from the Tl’esqox (formerly Toosey Band) west of Williams Lake, said he got a message from his friend on Jan. 7 that there was an eagle at the Nimpo Lake dump and she couldn’t fly.

“I went up there and tried to catch it, but [it] was a little bit too fast for my old self,” he told Sarah Penton, host of CBC’s Radio West. “And, like, she was hopping along the ground.”

The eagle, as it turned out, was stuck in a fishing net in the dump. Butler’s friend managed to free it, but he was unsuccessful in trying to corral it.

That’s when Butler went to the store and bought the bird a frozen lasagna.

“I thought she’d like a lasagna, you know?” he said.

“She just loved it. She ate the whole thing.”

Despite the bird of prey successfully hunting the meaty pasta, Butler still hadn’t managed to catch the eagle — so he called the SPCA.

A local SPCA rescuer met him at the dump around 9 p.m. that night. When they arrived, the injured eagle was sitting on a log and did not attempt to flee. They were able to walk up to the bird and safely wrap it in a jacket to contain it and take her to a vet, where they determined she’d hurt her wing.

Longtime wildlife volunteer Sue Burton, who lives in near Williams Lake, helped eventually get the bird the care it needed.

After a few days in Burton’s care, the bird was taken to the Orphaned Wildlife Rehabilitation Society in Delta, B.C.

Burton said that eagles, just like ravens, can be chatty birds — responding to human body movements and cues.

“You sit down, you talk to them — and sometimes you get a response and sometimes you get that angry look … she was kind of talky,” Burton recalled.

Waiting for lasagna

Butler has nicknamed the injured bird “Freedom,” and says eagles are treasured in Tl’esqox culture.

When the SPCA volunteers first arrived to help Butler with the injured bird, he recalls seeing another bird flying from a dirt hill to a nearby tree.

He said there’s four more of the eagle’s siblings there near the dump — joking that “they’re always there, sitting in the tree, waiting for lasagna.”

Burton and Butler said they would love to be present when the bird is released back into the wild after its rehabilitation.

For Butler, he said the episode is a reminder for people to properly dispose of their fishing nets, so that birds and other wildlife don’t get caught in them at the landfill.

As for the rescue itself, he said it felt awesome and he would “do it again and again.”