As Mary Martin of California and Michael Kerr of Valley Lee unloaded her cardboard carrying box from a pickup truck last month at the old Cedar Point Officers' Club at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, the female bald eagle flapped and scratched violently inside.
Martin and Kerr gingerly carried the box across the road, closer to the Patuxent River shore. There, they carefully removed the duct tape -- lots of it -- from the top of the box and gently tilted it on its side.
As Martin slowly opened the flaps, the eagle exploded from the box, swiftly opened her 6-foot wingspan, caught the stiff breeze and shot into the sky. Cheers erupted from nearly a dozen onlookers.
"It happens so fast," Martin said. "They think you're going to eat them."
The brief moment was the culmination of a nearly two-week effort by base personnel and local animal rescue groups to return the bird to health after it barely survived a disastrous splashdown in the Chesapeake Bay.
Kerr, an engineering technician with the U.S. Navy's Atlantic Test Ranges' optical section at Patuxent River, found the eagle and her mate floating in the water during an April 15 inspection of a Navy tracking station five miles south of the base.
"When I first saw them, I thought they were tangled in something," Kerr said. The male managed to swim ashore and fly away, but the other bird did not. "She was basically pancaked in the water."
The birds indeed had been tangled -- in each other. Martin explained that eagles climb to a high altitude, lock their talons together and freefall as they mate. Most of the time, they disconnect in time before they hit the ground or water.
When Kerr found the struggling bird, he placed a call to Ron Glockner, division deputy for Atlantic Targets and Marine Operations, which maintains a fleet of small boats for recovering test ordnance.
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Glockner said he and his team recovered the eagle. The exhausted bird didn't put up much resistance.
The eagle was transferred to Martin's care. Martin runs the Back to the Wild Rescue & Rehab organization and is federally licensed to take custody of injured bald eagles. She took the bird to All Kinds Veterinary Hospital in Callaway, where Dr. Adam Terry stabilized it and diagnosed puncture wounds, abrasions and internal bleeding on the eagle's wing.
The bird then was transferred to Tri-State Bird Rescue & Research, in Newark, Del., which specializes in rehabilitating orphaned and injured wild birds.
The eagle arrived, quiet and subdued, wheezing from the inhaled seawater and suffering from extensive bruising, Tri-State Director Sally Welte said. By the second day, however, she managed to escape from her cage, but, fortunately, not her room.
"She was ready to go," Welte said. "The captivity is very stressful for them."
The facility kept the bird for a week, putting her in a flight cage to make sure she could fly and balance on a perch.
Martin said she got the call to retrieve the eagle April 19.
"They said she was feisty and ready to go," Martin said.
Using a three-driver relay, the eagle was transported from Delaware to Southern Maryland, with Martin picking up the last leg of the journey.
"She was, I don't think, too extremely stressed," Martin said.
After rocketing out of her box, the eagle made a broad sweep of the area, got her bearings and glided off to the south.
"They don't look back, and that's the way you want it," Welte said.
