The Miller Park Zoo in Bloomington, Illinois was the scene of an eggnapping sometime between Thursday and Friday. One of two eggs laid by one of the zoo's eagles has gone missing. Officials think it was the raccoons, or maybe humans.
The discovery was made Friday afternoon at Miller Park Zoo in Bloomington, where attendance has been up since an eagle named Beauty laid eggs for the first time in her 13 years at the zoo.
No broken egg shells were found, zoo director John Tobias said, and both eggs appeared intact Thursday.
Beauty laid the eggs during a brief visit from a wild eagle that perched in trees over the enclosure for four days in late April. If the remaining egg is fertile, it could hatch around Memorial Day.
A captive male eagle named Mathata has been helping incubate the eggs. Neither eagle can fly because of injuries they suffered before their captivity.
Raccoons live nearby but haven't been spotted in the exhibit, Tobias said. His only other theory is that a human stole the egg.
Of course blaming the raccoons, just because they wear masks, steal and generally are well known troublemakers, is species profiling. Besides, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard know that the raccoons are innocent. It was the orangutans. They have been running a kidnapping for ransom ring for years.
This must somehow be connected. A missing eagle egg and suddenly half way around the world a mysterious stork egg hatches. Those storks have a history of getting involved with these blessed events.
Endangered stork egg hatches in wild
Sun May 20, 6:51 AM ET
TOKYO – An endangered white stork egg laid in the wild has hatched naturally in western Japan for the first time in more than 40 years, a local stork museum announced Sunday.
The new chick’s parents — a 7-year-old male Oriental white stork and his 9-year-old partner — were born through artificial breeding at a public farm, the Hyogo Prefectural Homeland for the Oriental White Stork, and were released into the wild last September.
The couple started mating in April and built their nest atop a 14-yard-tall manmade pole in a rice paddy near the farm in the city of Toyooka.
“The baby was born!” the Eco Museum Center for Oriental White Stork said in a statement on its Web site. “It would be a major step forward for storks’ return to the wild.”
The birth of a naturally bred stork is the first since one was recorded in 1964 in the central Japan town of Fukui.