Attempts to save eagle fall short after its crazy cement truck ride

An attempted rescue of a young bald eagle unfortunately was unsuccessful after its freak collision with a cement mixer early Friday morning.

The eagle flew out of a ditch as Tim Day of Gilman was driving the mixer on CTH M in western Taylor County. Day was on his way to load the mixer at the Haas Inc. concrete station just outside of Medford.

Somehow, the eagle survived the collision while badly breaking a wing and managed to hitch a ride on the truck for about 20 miles.

“Early this morning I was coming along or whatever and it was half-dark still,” Day said. “It flew up and I thought it got high enough to get past all of the stuff. I never saw it. I get here and I batch a load and I pull over to wash up and he’s tucked up in next to the drum. So I put a pair of gloves on and climbed up there, grabbed a hold of him and pulled him out.

“He was wedged in between the lower hopper and the upright. The drum was turning. I don’t know how he didn’t get in the drum.”

Day said he was stunned when he saw the eagle lodged in the truck.

“I never thought I hit him,” he said. “I didn’t even stop because when I saw him go up I just assumed like most birds, he cleared the truck and I didn’t see anything in the mirrors. Hopefully they’ll be able to take him and keep him alive.”

After getting the eagle down, Day’s co-worker, Travis Rehbein, called the Taylor County Sheriff’s Department in an attempt to figure out what to do next. Eventually, the Raptor Education Group Inc. (REGI) of Antigo was contacted and the wheels were put in motion to pick up the eagle and take it to REGI’s rehabilitation center. In the meantime, the eagle showed some spunk, crawling several yards before settling near a small brick wall on the Haas property.

Pete Roepke of Medford was, to say the least, surprised when he became part of the series of phone calls.

“I get a phone call about 10:10 from this Linda Grenzer, who I called a few years ago to come and rescue a loon that was out on a pond where it was starting to ice up and the loon didn’t have enough runway to get up. They rescued the loon. Anyway, she calls me and says can you come and help get this eagle under control. I’m like, ‘I’ve never done this before. They’re pretty big birds.’ They told me how to do it. I brought the dog cage out here along with the blanket. Jerry (Poncek) and I were able to wrangle him into the dog cage.”

A REGI representative picked up the eagle at about 12:30 p.m., more than six hours after the collision, and took it to the rehab center, which confirmed in a Tuesday morning phone call that, unfortunately, the eagle did not survive.