Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1894 — HOOSIER EAGLES. [ARTICLE]

HOOSIER EAGLES.

Tales of Aquiline Struggle* and Dis* comfiturea in Indiana.' “The Indiana eagles are on the rampage again,” said George Blosh field of Wayne County, “and thej seem to have taken a particular fancj this time to small boys. It isn’t sc long ago since the Sun printed the story about the big Vermilion County eagle that swooped down on i flock of geese in a farmer’s door-yard confidently expecting that it woulc be no job at all to soar back with t fat goose for dinner, and was almost knocked silly with surprise when th< whole flock pitched into him with t vim that compelled him to do som< of the liveliest fighting he had eve: run up against; and even then, aftei licking every one of the geese, the eagle failed to get one of them for hit dinner because the farmer’s daughtei came out and went at him with i fence rail and a dog and laid him sc low that he never got any higher thax the farmer’s mantelpiece, and then only as a stuffed eagle. “That story was all right, but indi rectly it gave out the idea, somehow that all the eagles in Indiana were in Vermilion County. Not by a lonf shot! Old Scott’s all right when it comes to eagles! Vermilion County may have a few more eagles than Scott County, but it takes two oi three Vermilion County eagles tc size up with one of Scott’s. Mrs. Fanner Rickards can tell you that. She lived in Vermilion County when she was a girl, and once killed ar eagle there that came down and tackled a turkey gobbler in her father’s barnyard. She killed it with 8 flail with which she was threshing out oats in the barn. That eagle measured six feet and a little over from tip to tip. It was considered a fair average Vermilion County eagle. Mrs. Farmer Rickards now lives in Scott County. Some time ago, when the weather was warm, Mrs. Rickards was out in the yard boiling soap. Hex 8-y ear-old boy was playing about the yard. Suddenly a shadow like that of a passing cloud came over ths. yard, and Mrs. Rickards heard a scream. She looked up and saw a heap of feathers as big as if one of her biggest feather beds had been dumped down there, but frorp the top of it rose the head, and from the bottom of it were thrust the feet of an eagle. The feet were clutched in the clothes of Mrs. Rickard’s 3-year-old boy, who was kicking and squirming and yelling to beat the band. Mrs. Rickards had ■ a large ladle in her hand. She dipped it in the kettle of soap, filled it with the boiling stuff, and sprinted across the yard only too quick. The eagle had got his hooks in on the boy all right by this time, and was rising easily with the youngster. But he had tarried too long. Mrs. Rickards dumped the ladle of boiling soap on the top of his head, and the hot stuff ran down and filled his eyes and nostrils jam full. The eagle dropped that boy as if he had been hotter than the soap, and began doing some of the liveliest ground and lofty tumbling around that yard that was ever seen. The soap hadn’t only blinded him; it was getting in its little alkali work on those sensitive organs in a way that simply crazed. “Mrs. Rickards grabbed her boy and ran with him into the house. Then she got her husband’s old army musket and ran back to use it on the eagle, which was still pirouetting around the yard like a rooster with - its head off. The gun wouldn’t go off, so Mrs. Rickards clubbed it and pounded that blinded and crazed eagle over the head until he was glad to die. He was undoubtedly a patriarch of the sky, for every feathei on him was as gray as the lichen on glacial rocks and he measured seven feet from tip to tip! “These are all the returns that were in when I left home, but I expect later news of Indiana eagles when I get back; for they are on one of their periodical rampages.”—[New York Sun.