The feline was apparently dropped by a bald eagle that was soaring over US-74 in Swain County in the far western part of the state at around 8am on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou may not believe me, but I just had a bald eagle drop a cat through my windshield,\u201d the stunned driver said while calling 911. \u201cIt absolutely shattered my windshield.\u201d<\/p>\n
The operator responded by saying, \u201cI do believe you, honestly,\u201d according to a statement from the North Carolina State Highway Patrol, seen by ABC 11.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a witness who was like, \u2018That is the craziest thing I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d the caller added while reeling from the crash.<\/p>\n
They also confirmed that the cat had sadly died and was lying \u201con the other side of the road.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, the driver was not injured and was instead left shaken.<\/p>\n
There are now around 316,700 bald eagles in the US, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, as the bird has been considered to be endangered since the 1980s.<\/p>\n
That number represents a massive population recovery, which has quadrupled since 2009. Many states no longer consider bald eagles to be endangered.<\/p>\n
Banning deadly pesticides, including DDT, and preventing environmental damage were significant factors in allowing the bird\u2019s population to recover.<\/p>\n
According to World Population Review, there are about 192 nesting pairs in North Carolina, making the state among the least populous. Meanwhile, Alaska is home to a staggering 30,000 nesting pairs.<\/p>\n
The bald eagle has only recently become the country\u2019s national bird, though, due to an oversight in US law. Since the bird is on the country\u2019s seal, lawmakers assumed that it was the official symbol of the United States. However, it has only had that prestigious status since 2024 when President Biden signed it into law.<\/p>\n
The birds often make headlines for their quirky behaviour, with one bald eagle knocking out a government drone in 2020.<\/p>\n
Two bird watchers confirmed that they saw the eagle attack the object, damaging it enough to cause it to crash out of the sky.<\/p>\n
Footage obtained by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy revealed that the eagle had torn off one of the drone\u2019s propellers in what is thought to have been \u201ca territorial squabble with the electronic foe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The feline was apparently dropped by a bald eagle that was soaring over US-74 in Swain County in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,898,82,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-153781","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-latest-news-ticker","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}