An aggressive young golden eagle viciously attacked a 20-month-old girl and three other people over a five-day period in Norway before terrified victims were forced to kill it.
The toddler was playing outside her family’s farm on Saturday in Orklan — a small village in the Scandinavian country’s south — when the eagle swooped in “out of the blue” and sliced her open with its talons.
The girl’s father, who was not home during the attack, told Norwegian outlet NRK that the girl’s mother and a neighbor rushed over to fight off the bird.
The bird had attacked people three times before the frightened mother and neighbor killed it with a piece of wood, Alv Ottar Folkestad, an eagle expert with BirdLife Norge, told the Associated Press.
The golden eagle “likely had a behavioral disorder,” Folkestad said.
The golden eagle is Norway’s second-largest bird of prey and has a massive wingspan of 6.5 feet. The fowl typically prey on smaller animals as well as foxes and sheep.
The young girl needed stitches and had scratch marks on her face — including one wound just under her eye, according to local reports.
Despite the injuries and the scare, she and her mother, who were not identified, are doing fine, according to the girl’s dad.
Police were made aware of the attack but said they have no additional details, saying a gamekeeper had been contacted.
The golden eagle is believed to be the same raptor that attacked three others in the area.
Francis Ari Sture was hiking on a mountain on Thursday when he thought a human had tried to shove him off a cliff — then he saw the large eagle.
“We are staring at each other for, maybe, a whole minute,” Sture told the AP. “I’m trying to think what’s in its mind.”
The bird then attacked him five more times, scratching and clawing the 31-year-old’s face and arms as it chased him down the mountain for more than 10 minutes.
One of the other two victims, Mariann Myrvang, filmed the bird as it attacked her. She told NRK she cried out when “something big and heavy landed on my shoulders.”
“I went down on my knees, because I couldn’t stand up,” under its weight, she said.
Her husband chased the eagle away with a branch, but not before Myrvang suffered deep cuts from its claws that required penicillin and a tetanus shot at the hospital.
The shocking attacks are “radically different from normal [eagle behavior],” Folkestad said, adding that the attacks were likely all by a female eagle born this year.
“Details in the plumage make me believe it is the same bird. The plumage means that no two golden eagles are alike,” he said.
Over the past several days there were “favorable weather conditions” with high-altitude winds that allowed the eagles to fly long distances over southern Norway.
Sture said he tried to shield himself with his backpack and kick the eagle but it kept coming back as he fled down the mountain.
He was terrified that he would slip on the steep terrain and knock himself out, believing the eagle “would start to eat me.”
The eagle finally flew away, but Sture, bleeding from his injuries and without a phone, still had a two-hour hike back to his campsite, where he was able to call his father.
He took a taxi to the closest hospital, where he was treated for a gouge just inches from his left eye. Doctors said his sunglasses and long-sleeved shirt saved he from further harm.
Sture received a tetanus shot and his brother drove him the six hours home. He says he’ll continue hiking — but may avoid that summit for a while.
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