A wedge-tailed eagle tried to fly away with a terrified boy at a popular wildlife show in central Australia.<\/p>\n
A crowd of stunned onlookers watched the enormous bird latch its talons onto the screaming boy’s head during a show at Alice Springs Desert Park.<\/p>\n
Witnesses said the bird attempted to pick him up “like a small animal”.<\/p>\n
The boy – believed to be between six and eight years old – escaped with a “superficial” gash to his face.<\/p>\n
Christine O’Connell from Horsham in Victoria state was visiting the park with her husband on 6 July when the attack occurred.<\/p>\n
She told the BBC the eagle flew straight for the boy from about 15m away.<\/p>\n
“A fellow who was sitting closer said the little boy kept running his zipper up and down,” said Mrs O’Connell, who caught the attack on her camera.<\/p>\n
The eagle grabbed the boy’s green hoodie and attempted to him lift away before park staff moved in.<\/p>\n
The attack left the boy crying and bleeding, but his injuries were not severe.<\/p>\n
A Victorian man who was in the crowd, Keenan Lucas, told the NT News the show was ended quickly after the attack.<\/p>\n
“We’re at the bird show in the afternoon, having a great time and looking forward to seeing the wedge-tailed eagle come out for the finale,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The bird then flew over the crowd and tried to grab on to a young boy’s head. He screamed, the mother was distraught and the presenters wrapped up the show very quickly.”<\/p>\n
The park issued a statement to the media after being contacted about the event.<\/p>\n
“On Wednesday, 6 July, an incident occurred at the Alice Springs Desert Park where an eagle made contact with an audience member,” the park said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“A thorough investigation regarding the circumstances behind this incident is under way and the eagle will be removed from the show while this investigation is ongoing.”<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A wedge-tailed eagle tried to fly away with a terrified boy at a popular wildlife show in central Australia. A crowd of stunned onlookers watched the enormous bird latch its talons onto the screaming boy’s head during a show at Alice Springs Desert Park. Witnesses said the bird attempted to pick him up “like a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":230242,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=230209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/230242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=230209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=230209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=230209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}