It came to them bedraggled, burned and covered in slime. Just weeks later, a miraculous transformation had taken place as the bald eagle, healed from its plunge into a toxic chemical pond, once again flew free.

The rehabilitated, four-year-old male bald eagle was released back into the wild on Saturday July 12 at Jamestown Beach in Williamsburg, Virginia. The eagle had been recovered from a sediment pond at the Evonik Goldschmidt Corp., a medicines manufacturer in Hopewell, VA, suffering from chemical burns and covered in foul-smelling polyether-and-glycol residue.

“When we first received the eagle, he was in pretty bad shape including chemical burns to his skin underneath his feathers,” said Jimmy Two Hawks Beamer (Cherokee), CEO and co-founder of Sacred Friends, Inc., a nonprofit wildlife rehabilitation organization in Virginia that rehabilitated the bird. “The eagle was completely covered with gooey slime and he smelled horrible, it took more than five baths to get him clean. Then we had to allow a few weeks for the natural oil on the feathers to build back up from preening.”


The eagle was rehabilitated by Sacred Friends Inc., and received supplementary care from the Midway Veterinarian Hospital in Chesapeake, Virginia.

“Whenever an animal is injured, you always want them to get better,” said Pearl Beamer (Lakota), co-founder and secretary of Sacred Friends. “But I’ll be honest—we really wanted this young guy to get better. He was very feisty! He has acted like a Cooper’s Hawk in that he didn’t really glide from spot to spot like an eagle, but bounced all over his cage, just pinging back and forth.”


Moments before its release, the young raptor appeared healthy and alert and certainly willing to hiss, snap his beak at the handlers and let it be clearly known he was ready to be set free.
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