Knoxville Woman Comes To The Rescue Of Bald Eagle Stranded In Busy Street

Not all heroes wear capes. Some wear raincoats and come brandishing camping chairs. 

The latter is the kind of hero that came to the aid of a bald eagle found on a Tennessee road Monday. 

Nathan Van Gundy told WVLT that he and his wife Lori were on the way home from the grocery store when they spotted the eagle in the middle of Ruggles Ferry Pike in East Knoxville.

“As I stopped to see it, my wife doesn’t even hesitate and gets out of the vehicle to help it in the pouring rain,” Nathan recalled. “She tried moving it off to the side of the road but it wouldn’t budge.”

In a video of the impromptu rescue effort Nathan shared on Youtube, Lori and other good samaritans can be seen using jackets and a blue chair to encourage the stunned bird to move off the road. Eventually Lori is able to get close enough to the eagle to envelope it with her jacket. She then scooped the large bird up and carefully carried it to a grassy area beside the road. 

After a few minutes, they all watched the bald eagle fly off. 

“Lori has always been a lover of birds and she was beyond thrilled to get to experience this,” Nathan told Southern Living. 

It’s unclear why the bird was struggling, but it reminds us of another Tennessee bald eagle that appeared injured, but was deemed simply “too full to fly.”

Fingers crossed this particular eagle was just recovering from a big meal.