I have the luxury of working at a zoo, so I see a lot of captive wild animals every day I work from giant tortoises to lowland gorillas. Yet, I always stay on the lookout for the native wildlife in my area. We get a lot of opossums and raccoons that will sometimes mess with our animals, and plenty of native birds that come to steal the meat we put out on exhibit for our animals.
So, there’s a lot of native wildlife that I get to see, but I have to share the coolest native wildlife sighting that happened to me a couple weeks ago.
I was working in my main routine at my zoo. It was projected to snow and my routine calls for a lot of time outdoors because you have to walk to the different animal buildings. I remember hearing these cries throughout the day that sounded so familiar. It was one of those where you know that sound, but you can’t quite place it or remember why you know it. I was walking from our tortoise building to our aviary when I heard it again. I turned in the direction of the cry with a scrunch on my face because–for the life of me–I couldn’t remember why I knew that sound. You know what I saw?
Two bald eagles.
Not one, but two wild bald eagle flew right over my head. They flew as low as the top of our tortoise building (which is shorter than your average tree), and I got to watch them fly off toward the horizon. I’ve taken care of a bald eagle before, and it wasn’t until I saw those two flying that I realized the cries I was hearing were similar to the ones I heard from our bald eagle. I rarely get to see wild bald eagles. So, seeing two flying over my head is definitely a memory I’m going to treasure.
Right afterwards, it started to snow.
nikki diekemper 