Imagine trying to eat a bowl of marbles with one chopstick -- pretty frustrating, right? Welcome to a day in the life of Beauty the bald eagle. The top side of her beak was shot off by some treasonous idiot near Anchorage (what would Stephen Colbert think about that?), where she was later found trying to survive by eating trash at the local landfill. Since then she's been hand fed everyday by Jane Cantwell at her raptor recovery center in Idaho, but that could soon change thanks to the help of a prosthetic beak.For the last two years, Jane has be rounding up a team of engineers to design a bionic beak so that Beauty can once again eat without assistance. A dentist, veterinarian, and other volunteers are developing a nylon composite replacement to be glued on to what's left of Beauty's disfigured upper beak.
Since the beak won't be strong enough to tear up prey, Beauty can't be released back into the wild, buy she will be able to drink water and eat the food provided at the raptor ranch. Her life expectancy with the new beak is about 50 years -- I had no idea that eagles lived that long. If you like animal recovery stories, you should check out Jonathon's post about the bionic turtle.
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