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Dog survives being snatched by eagle
BOWMANSTOWN – Felipe Rodriguez says he thought he was hallucinating when an eagle snatched his sister’s little white dog from her yard, flapped its massive wings and disappeared over the trees. Did he really just see that? He had. Zoey the 8-pound bichon frisé was gone, taken by a hungry raptor Tuesday afternoon not 50 feet from his sister’s house on the banks of the Lehigh River in Pennsylvania, Rodriguez said.
“It seemed like something from the ‘Wizard of Oz,’ ” he said Wednesday. “I’m a city boy. This doesn’t happen in my world.”
Rodriguez said he was by himself at his sister’s home in Bowmanstown, about 80 miles north of Philadelphia, when he heard a loud screech, hurried to the French doors leading to the deck and saw the eagle with its talons in Zoey, who had been playing in the fenced yard.
“The bird was holding onto the dog. There was flapping of wings, and then it was gone,” said Rodriguez, a 50-year-old health care ex- ecutive visiting from Chicago.
Heartbroken, she and her husband scoured the woods for Zoey’s body. Little did they know their little bichon would be found later that afternoon — 4 miles away.
Zoey’s rescuer was Christina Hartman, 51, of Palmerton, who said she was driving on a snowcovered back road when she spotted a furry white lump ahead and pulled over to investigate.
“I notice this little frozen dog, icicles hanging from all over. It could hardly move,” Hartman said.
It didn’t take long for Hartman to find the dog’s owners. She spotted Newhard’s public Facebook post Wednesday morning — Newhard had uploaded a photo of Zoey — and made an excited call.
“I said, ‘It’s a miracle! I have your dog!’ ” Hartman said.
Zoey had some bruising and a few missing patches of fur. It’s not clear how far the eagle might have carried the dog, but Rodriguez said he can’t believe Zoey survived.
“She is not really herself, but she is getting lots of love,” his sister, Newhard, texted the AP late Wednesday. “She doesn’t want to go out. … I really can’t blame her.”