Eagle celeb calls Blue Mountain Wildlife home By SAMANTHA TIPLER East Oregonian East Oregonian Blue Mountain Wildlife, the raptor rehabilitation center south of Pendleton, has added a minor celebrity to its educational team. In Bend, Patriot the bald eagle was an icon on local television news. A video of his mouth-to-beak resuscitation at a veterinary clinic there also hit it big on YouTube, Good Morning America and CNN. But since the beginning of this month, the eagle has been getting accustomed to his new home at Blue Mountain Wildlife. Three La Pine women found him injured on a road near Crane Prairie Reservoir, about 40 miles south of Bend. They took the eagle to the Sunriver Nature Center, which brought him June 20 to veterinarian Jeff Cooney of Bend Veterinary Clinic. Cooney works closely with Blue Mountain Wildlife and specializes in raptor care. “I wasn’t sure he was going to make it through the night,” Cooney said. The eagle was paralyzed. His left wing was badly damaged, including a dislocated shoulder, elbow, wrist and broken bones. Cooney guessed he had been hit by a car. Local television station KTVZ picked up the story and the eagle became a local celebrity. The station asked viewers to vote on a name, and Patriot won out. “Patriot has a will to live. He’s a survivor,” Cooney said. “The other part is we didn’t give up on him.” Cooney nursed Patriot back to health, starting with intravenous fluids and eventually feeding him raw chicken from a bowl. Every week Cooney took X-rays to measure progress of the eagle’s healing bones. He anesthetizes the bird for the procedure, as he does with most raptors, and inserts a breathing tube to make sure the bird does not regurgitate and inhale fluids into its lungs. That tube often causes the raptor to stop breathing, according to Cooney and Blue Mountain Wildlife director Lynn Tompkins. Nonetheless, Cooney said he has never lost a bird under anesthesia. Two weeks into recovery, Patriot stopped breathing during an X-ray session. As he has in other cases, Cooney gave Patriot mouth-to-beak resuscitation. The bird had stopped breathing for about five minutes, but Cooney got him breathing again without a problem. It just happened that Jeannette Bonomo, a fellow raptor specialist, filmed it. The video went to the local news and YouTube. KTVZ said the video showed on news outlets as far away as Japan and New Zealand. Good Morning America and CNN also picked it up. “He was already sort-of famous and this made him even more famous,” Cooney said.
He teaches mouth-to-beak resuscitation as a technique, but Cooney guessed many people hadn’t seen it before and found it entertaining. “If you’re giving mouth-to-beak resuscitation, you shouldn’t inhale,” Cooney said with a laugh. “You’re breathing bird breath. They eat fish and it doesn’t smell very good.” Along with his international notoriety, Patriot remained a local celebrity. A 9-year-old Bend girl raised more than $1,000 to help with Patriot’s vet bills, KTVZ reported. An Oregon City woman donated 90 trout to feed him. Patriot gradually recovered, regaining use of his feet, learning to stand and to open and close his talons. His wing also healed, although he will never be able to fly and thus cannot return to the wild. Even though Cooney received calls from all over Oregon and from organizations around the country, he knew Blue Mountain Wildlife was the perfect fit for Patriot’s permanent home. “My concern was he was going to be a high-maintenance bird,” Cooney said. “I wanted him to be someplace where he would have top-notch veterinary care and where I could keep an eye on him.” Cooney and Tompkins often consult on cases; Cooney gives seminars at Blue Mountain Wildlife at least once a year. “I knew about this bird from the get-go,” Tompkins said. Tompkins recently lost a raptor from the educational team she takes to schools, museums and events around Eastern Oregon and southeast Washington. Ula, the golden eagle Tompkins was training to fly from her gloved fist, was electrocuted during training in August. The eagle’s death hit Tompkins hard. Patriot will help fill that gap on the education team. Tompkins moved him last week into Ula’s old home, a chain-link cage about the size of a large dog run. Also, Tomkins and Cooney said they hope Patriot can become a driving force for Blue Mountain Wildlife’s plan to build a hospital specializing in raptor care. He and Tompkins are calling Patriot their “spokeseagle” for the project. In the meantime Tompkins is getting him used to people and to being handled. She said the unlike many bald eagles, he doesn’t try to bite her. Since his wing was so badly damaged, Tompkins doubts he will fly even short distances. She plans to teach him to sit on her glove. “We’re going slow,” she said. “He’ll just be on a glove or perch, hopefully looking gorgeous.”