Posted on 07/17/2011 3:19:05 PM PDT by JoeProBono
NEW YORK, - A New York woman says she had nearly given up hope her pet cat, Eddie, was still alive after the feline was carried off by a red-tailed hawk.
But Eddie, who weighs in at a hefty 15 pounds, was found stunned and disheveled but still kicking in the back yard of an apartment building after the estimated 4-pound bird apparently couldn't hang on and dropped it.
Eddie plummeted an estimated five stories but was no worse for wear, the New York Daily News said Saturday. "He checked out fine, other than some minor cuts, scrapes and bruises," said Eddie's owner, who did not want to be identified. "The vet says he's an amazing cat."
The woman admitted she wasn't so fine after hearing a ruckus outside her Upper West Side apartment and finding "fur, broken nails and feathers" when she went out to investigate.
"I walked for hours all over the neighborhood and up Riverside Drive, sobbing, looking for his body," she said. "I went to all the hawks' nests. I put up signs with Eddie's photo."
Animal experts said hawks generally don't consider household pets to be on their menu; however, they did recall a 2003 incident in Bryant Park when a hawk swooped down on an unsuspecting Chihuahua.
Special KITTY PING! :)=^..^=
These'll mess you up.
Please ping to your cat ping list!
I agree totally. A predator survives not because of its wile, but because it sees and hunts animals etc that are much smaller and less likely to injure said predator. I’ve seen grown foxes sidestep fully grown rabbits because they are a threat and impossible to run down. Predators are bullies at heart.
An injured predator is a dead predator. A domestic 15 lb cat is a born again predator and believe me it will never be threatened by a 4 or 5 lb bird with feathers and wings. The bird will be destroyed. That’s reality.
Someone in NYC is looking for their 15 minutes of fame, but what’s new?
Reminds me when I was a lineman apprentice working the back-country of San Diego around 3,000ft. Red tailed hawk had just snatched a rattlesnake and was gaining altitude moving in the direction of a boulder outcrop and when directly over head let the snake go and it bounced once off a huge boulder as the hawk made a leisurely turn and came down for his meal.
More than once, responded to calls to change out high voltage transformers when predator’s prey ended up between the insulators, half fried.
Then there was the time in my parent backyard in the city when a red tail came out of nowhere and took a mocking bird out of the top of their orange tree. Happened so fast if you blinked you would have missed it except for the getaway flight.
That is exactly how she got her name.
I just knew you would! Let us prey!
Love ya, too, my fellow Texan, but convince me why I should love a bird that swoops down on innocent little creatures and tears them apart?
I’ve seen a squirrel face down a red tailed hawk. But I also know that a cat of mine was carried off by an owl. The cat was small though. Not a 15 pounder. I intentionally got a big breed of cat and now have a 15 pounder who rarely leaves the house and insists on being inside by 8:00 p.m.
OMG, you sound like my woman. They have a lot of windows in their building where she works, seems a red-tail latched onto a bunny right outside her office recently. Huge trauma for her and her mates.
I’ll answer your question by asking why love a deer hunter who nails a big buck from 250 meters? Venison tastes good.
No, I don’t mean to be flippant, I just respect the hunter. Prey is there to be food. That hawk has a family to feed, too, and his/hers don’t eat bird seed, they eat red meat.
I always root for the harvester, not the harvestee. But I can respect your side, too. Let’s call it the cowboy way.
OK, I have to draw the line somewhere. No cats ;)
"who's a pretty boy?"
My Mother had a much loved cat picked up by a big owl and carried off one night while folks were sitting in the yard visiting! That cat we believed was gone forever, but she showed back at the house a month later, a lot thinner but talking up a cat strom as she pranced right into Mother’s house and started eating from the cat bowl. Spec weighed at least 15 pounds before the owl put her on a ‘field diet’.
Bloomberg’s brown-shirts might confiscate the cat from the owner—not because a hawk grabbed it...but because she has overfed the cat!
LOL!!! I was looking for that one! It looks like they’re both sizing each other up.
I'm guessing, if'n he's a bald eagle, he knows he'll need a fur hat come wintertime. ;o)
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