Belford's Magazine, Vol 2, December 1888

You will, however, be able to observe some of his traits that seem more natural. There are the cruel eyes and the relentless expression; the "hooked claws" and the "bending beak." It is an eye whose expression never changes, and which regards with constant malice all its surroundings. The brow, which gives it the look so much admired, seems, according to Mr. Ruskin, to be merely a provision of nature to keep the sun from shining into it, thus disposing, Ruskin-like, at one fell swoop of one of the most striking of the poetical myths.

Still others will be disposed of if you stay long. Did any one of my readers ever read that neither the eagle nor the lion would eat anything they had not themselves slain? Well, later advices seem to indicate that both will upon occasion descend to carrion of the basest quality, and that both consume considerable time in their native haunts in catching and devouring bugs. Lizards and such small fry are assiduously looked for. Convincing proof of this, in the eagle's case, was not wanting in one brief visit to the above-mentioned famous and beautiful resort. In the same huge cage with the eagles were certain crocodiles, or alligators, or whatever name you may choose to call the Floridian saurian by. To me they all seem very much alike. I suppose this is because I do not care much about supra-orbital bones, or the number of teeth or toes, or minute particulars of anatomical conformation, but am disposed, after a blundering and non-technical fashion, to mostly regard looks and actions. The adult, or semi-adult, alligators lie all the time asleep, never moving, never winking, never so much as apparently breathing, and looking very much like chunks in a clearing. One wonders, in view of all the stories told, if they are really alive this fine summer weather, when there is no excuse for hibernation, and if so, how they ever manage to catch anything except possibly by lying with their mouth open and waiting until something mistakes the locality and crawls into it by inadvertance.

But there is one little beast in this interesting family so young and inexperienced as to be only about nine inches long, including all there is belonging to him, largely tail. He is of a dark-green color, with a mottled-yellow belly, and a mouth, when he opens it, very red indeed. He has no teeth large enough to be very frightful at a distance, and evidently depends upon the mere opening of this fiendish mouth to scare away all disturbers of the profound peace which broods perpetually over him and all his family.

This small one had got away, and in a modified and unsatisfactory search for his native bayou had crept through the meshes of the wire and into the other apartment where the eagles were. He was down in the little rill of running water, and partially hidden under a stone. An eagle had espied him there, and was watching him, while I watched the eagle. Presently the natural instincts of the bird of Jove became too strong for successful repression even in the presence of distinguished company, and he left his perch in the usual ungraceful way, and after alighting on the ground waddled to where the little reptile was having a comfortable time in his exile. He hesitated about the water, but finally waded in and scratched the monster out from under his sheltering rock. He then caught him round the middle with one gigantic claw which met entirely around his prey, and scrambled ashore. By this time the saurian was fairly awake, and began to provide for his immediate future by opening his mouth. The eagle, looking between his legs, saw this and dropped him as an uncanny thing, and afterwards spent some ridiculous minutes dancing around his foe and warily dodging his satanic manifestations of open mouth. The whole performance was such on the part of the eagle as would have disgraced in the eyes of her waiting family, an ordinary hen, and the end was that the alligator got safely back to his puddle and his rock. He did it deliberately, and backwards, with his mouth open about one-third of his entire length. The bird was of average size. He had the white feathers on his head which made him the "bald" or "American" eagle. Here was the emblem of this great republic vanquished by a sleepy little lizard less than a foot long. It was almost as disgraceful a performance as the Mexican War of '46.

I was once part proprietor of an eagle. He belonged to us, and we were a company of soldiers at a frontier post. While I knew him he lived in the mule-corral, and appeared to me to be at a great disadvantage there. Somebody had winged him against the face of the brown cliff at whose top he had been hatched, and he was now accustomed to sit upon a rail in the corner of the shed, and glare balefully at all intruders in the place he fancied he owned. He was perhaps fat beyond rule, but his claws were as long and sharp, and his eye was as relentless, as though still obliged to follow his natural calling of catching the little New-Mexican cotton-tail, and swooping down upon horned toads.

His wings measured about five feet from tip to tip, though he was supposed to have only lately passed the perilous period of his first moulting, and to be quite young. He was fed with bloody morsels of beef, and had, when he chose to take it, the freedom of the whole enclosure. But he was not on good terms with his neighbors, and maintained a very dignified demeanor toward some fifty mules, a dozen or so of cocks and hens, and an especially-privileged pig who had the run of the premises because it had been brought up by hand, and had, for a pig, remarkably aristocratic ideas. He frowned upon all manner of fellow-creatures who by accident and unintentionally paid a visit to his majesty. Peg, who owned a house which she considered her own near his perch, this mansion being a deal-box turned down, was a special aversion. Peggy was a large dog, and was herself not a pattern of amiability, especially when she was the mother of from nine to thirteen puppies, as frequently was the case; and it was commonly remarked that Aquila was in danger of having his head bitten off if he interfered with this interesting family, which he seemed rather foolishly inclined to do. Yet this was not by any means what became of this Monarch of the Air finally.

If the eagle is one of the striking emblems of power, he is also upon occasion, as before remarked, a specimen of decided and almost pitiable imbecility. He cannot even walk. His utmost endeavors in that humble direction seem to result only in an ungraceful waddle, in which his claws interfere with his shins, and those of his right foot interfere with those of his left, and he drags his tail in a most undignified manner in the dust. Also, his long wing-tips refuse to stay folded in a proper manner, as each time he stumbles he is impelled to throw out a wing, reminding one of a boy walking across a brook on a log. This one could fly only a little. The accident that had resulted in his captivity he had recovered from, but the wing bone had not been properly set where it was broken, and the short flights he attempted were very one-sided. So when he wished to go anywhere he usually walked, and it was such a walk as above described, or worse.

And when he did, it was to a place one would never have imagined that a properly conducted and self-respecting eagle would have thought of. But the bird seemed to have a liking for low resorts, and his special weakness was the pig-pen. This was, as it should have been, outside the walls, and was generally occupied by some eight or a dozen little, sharp-nosed, pointed-eared, anti-Berkshire, Mexican pigs, whose business it was to eat up all that was left from the dinner of more than a hundred soldiers, and to be the heirs of all the condemned commissary stores, and whose fate it was to be finally eaten themselves, say about Christmas. The last lot that went in there is a distinct recollection to me, aside from their doings with the eagle. They came from some aboriginal hamlet on the banks of the Rio Grande, about a hundred miles away. Each two of them had accommodations to themselves – a pen made of willow sticks, tied together with raw-hide, and slung upon a donkey. The long-suffering animal who had carried them so far had a round dozen for his cargo. He was heaped and piled with pig-cages, and the topmost pair of little swine were having an airy ride at the apex of a pyramid about eight feet from the ground, swaying from side to side with a sea-sick motion as the donkey walked; and they looked sick. A more unpromising family was never reared even in New Mexico. Nevertheless they were dropped over the side of the pen after much chaffering with the owner, and at an expense of "four bits" each.

As soon as by some means he found out they were there, it was to the pig-pen that this fatuous fowl resorted. I do not know why, but it was not because he loved them, nor that he had especial business with them. Making his way thither as best he could he would perch upon the side of the pen and glare balefully down upon the occupants, who did not seem to greatly care if he chose to amuse himself in that senseless manner. But after a while he would drop down on the back of the nearest one, and holding fast with his claws, he would proceed to bite the back of his neck, tweak his ears, and otherwise maltreat him. But at his first squeal the others would make common cause with him, after the unselfish fashion of pigs, and together they would pull our emblem down, drag him down in the dust or mud as the case might be, and finally would hustle him off into a corner, where he would sit scowling until some soldier came and took him away. Whenever the shrill voice of a pig was heard expostulating it would be understood that the eagle was at it again, and somebody would go to the rescue of our national greatness. Often have I seen a couple of soldiers, each with the tip of a wing in his hand, and with the eagle between them, marching him across the parade-ground to his proper roost. On these occasions he looked exceedingly silly. When his feet touched the ground he would attempt to walk, and with even less success than usual. He reminded me of some urchin who had fallen into the creek, and who was being led homeward in much wetness and humiliation.

It is a sad story when the traditional dignity of the principal character is considered, for he was finally killed by those pigs. The facts developed at the inquest seemed to indicate that he had no discretion, and had gone too often. They had walked over him, and had even lain down upon him. Dead and disregarded he lay in a corner among the litter, and they had not even attempted to eat him. This seemed to indicate that they had killed him merely as a lesson to him. There never was more ignominious end to an exalted character.

Literature is very full of the reputed nobleness of certain birds and beasts; their vaunted qualities of head and heart; the pride of their bearing; the independence of their lives; the solitary grandeur of their characters. And in the majority of cases these heathenish notions have remained undispelled by the lapse of time. Even men assume for long periods of time the characters that romantic biographers have clothed them with, and the youth of this country, now men, are only just beginning to recover their senses after the singular yarns of such books as Abbott's Life of Napoleon, read in youth. As instances of the first statement, the elephant is actually, and in his real circus life, an indocile and malicious beast, prone to blind rages, revenges, and sly malice. The camel, darling of the Arab, ship of the desert, etc., has, by the testimony of those who know him well, less sense than a sheep; as long-necked and homely a piece of perfect stupidity as there is in the caravan, and looks it. I shall have attained the topmast round of a species of high treason when I mention a doubt as to whether that noble slave, the horse, is entitled to his general reputation, but such a doubt I have. There are those who lose a good deal of money on him, and will forgive him anything, even to the occasional breaking of their necks. He has his admirers in a majority of mankind, yet there never actually lived that fabled creature, a "safe" horse.

To revert again, and finally, to our national emblem, his mode of life gives him, if we may fall into the vernacular, dead away. He may have his virtues from our standpoint, and one of them is that he is not prolific. His crude nest is such a one as a boy might build in rough imitation of a nest, and call it an eagle's. Made of big sticks and nothing else, and added to as the years pass, it is wedged into the forks of a solitary hemlock, as high as possible from the ground and as remote as possible from any other thing, or is perched upon the shelf of the cliff above the canyon or the coast. It contains only three or four homely eggs. He seems faithful in his domestic relations, and pairs off not for a season, but for life or good behavior. This one fact covers his good qualities, for there is undoubtedly a spice of the heroic about it. With all his rapacious and predatory power of wing it may not be doubted that he is a bug-eater and a lizard-catcher, and that on mesa or in valley he fights with the raven and the buzzard for the possession of the uppermost eye of the casual dead mule. But his especial, weakness is an article of diet that he has no right to in the animal code, for the reason that he can't catch it. That is fish, and he invariably simply steals it when he gets it. Any man who has witnessed this proceeding and not been outraged by it could hardly be considered a competent juryman in a Chicago boodle case. The osprey, having caught his lawful fish by pure skill and natural capacity, bears it away wriggling in his talons. He is weighted by his booty and flies heavily. Somebody who has been sulkily watching him for perhaps a day or two from some unseen nook, sails after him and pounces upon him from above. Turning to fight he must drop his fish, which the other gets and goes off with. One can but see the disappointed fisherman return again to his watching, and think of a hungry brood of nestlings waiting at home, and feel some degree of displeasure and regret in the fact that the marauder, unpunished and unregretful, is none other than the emblem and figure-head of the great republic. He knows that no nation can be considered strictly honest except his own, and he ever after is disposed to wonder at that ignorance of the plainest facts of natural history that has led it to choose out from the beasts and birds a thief and a coward for the only bit of heraldry its statutes know,