{"id":23339,"date":"2006-02-17T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T06:35:07","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T06:35:07","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T06:35:07","slug":"el_rushbo_s_experience_with_bald_eagles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2006\/02\/17\/el_rushbo_s_experience_with_bald_eagles\/","title":{"rendered":"El Rushbo\u2019s Experience with Bald Eagles"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve heard about this. The City council of Homer, Alaska, has banned humans from feeding bald eagles. Now, for those of you that were educated in the public school system of this country, the bald eagle is our national bird. It is the national symbol, and starting next year, it will be illegal to feed them. There are hundreds of these eagles that gather every winter in Homer, Alaska, and starting next year it\u2019s going to be illegal to feed them. There is an exception. Some 82-year-old woman, a famous woman named Jean Keene whose nickname is The Eagle Lady and she\u2019s been feeding eagles in Homer for 25 years. So she\u2019s going to be the only exception when the law kicks in. <\/line>Now, who\u2019s this going to hurt besides the eagles? Well, guided tour groups of photographers make this journey from all over the world with their cameras in hand and their bait fish in the other coaxing eagles to compose for pictures. Now, the councilman addressing the photographer safari said, “We\u2019re still going to have eagles in Homer but you don\u2019t have to have hundreds of eagles to take a photograph.” Here\u2019s why this happened. The ban resulted from complaints that bald eagles being fed was not only unnatural, but it\u2019s “demeaning.” It\u2019s demeaning to feed the eagles! Now, stop and think: these are the same kind of people who believe totally <\/emphasize>in unquestioned welfare. These are also the people who believe unquestionably in animal rights and so forth, but now all of a sudden because this is the national bird, this has ties to America, it somehow is “demeaning” to see the eagles fed. <\/line> Now, it\u2019s tempting, however, on one level not to dismiss the argument. I mean, here is our national symbol, the national bird, proud, strong — soon to be taken off the endangered species list, by the way, is the bald eagle — and the people of Alaska have made him a blue state welfare recipient. Essentially the eagle just sits around waiting to be fed. It\u2019s embarrassing to me on one level. So to end that picture of a welfare recipient bald eagle national symbol of our country, ah, I can go for it. But at the same time, there\u2019s a deal taking place here that is also not good. You almost could perceive the law here as welfare reform, but there\u2019s a difference. These eagles were willing to work for their food! They were willing to come take the food and then be photographed. They provided a service essentially: posing for photographs, a fair exchange of goods and services. So in the end, the eagle ban, the feeding the eagle ban is a stunning defeat for North American free trade in one regard. <\/line> I have fed eagles. Well, I didn\u2019t actually do it, but I took a fishing trip — it was salmon fishing trip — up Vancouver Island. Two of us went out on little putt-putt boats taking a guide where we were to fish and helping us do it all, and one day on the way back in he spotted a bunch of bald eagles (or some kind of eagles) way up in the pine trees (or whatever trees they were in). So he stopped the boat and he turned off the engine and told us to get our cameras out, and lo and behold if he wasn\u2019t able to coax those eagles to within ten feet of our boat. I\u2019ve got pictures of it. I\u2019ll try to post one on the website today. You luck on when these things are racing by I happened to get a good shot of these eagles in motion, and they\u2019re just ten feet away and he\u2019s calling them with a voice and waving bait fish just like is happening in Homer, Alaska. <\/line><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t realize that I was participating in making the national symbol a welfare recipient in the process here. I was doing it just to get an up-close look at the eagle, but apparently it happened regularly because the birds were not afraid to fly down to the boat where we were, so I guess it was part of the package. It didn\u2019t happen every day because they don\u2019t see eagles every day but this guy happened to spot a couple of them up there in the tree. It was cool. I\u2019ve never been that close to an eagle, other than when I used to have 50 cent pieces.<\/line>BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/line>RUSH: To the phones, to Santa Fe, New Mexico<\/a>. Hello, Jeff, glad you waited, sir.<\/line>CALLER: Hello. I was in Homer, Alaska, about 15 years ago, end of September, well after the tourists have left. We were watching dozens and dozens of bald eagles, most of –or many of them — were immature. They\u2019re still dark.<\/line><\/p>\n

RUSH: Okay, hang on there just a second. It\u2019s been a while since I talked about this, Jeff, and I want to bring the audience that wasn\u2019t listening back when I was speaking, those two or three, up to speed on this. There\u2019s a story out of Homer, Alaska. For the last 25 years, there have been safaris of photographers, tour groups, go up there because the bald eagle winters in Homer, Nebraska, and the photographers are allowed to take bait fish out and attract the eagles and feed them and get up-close pictures this way. This practice will be banned beginning next year, and it\u2019s kind of confusing for me on one level, because on the one hand, the people up in Alaska have turned our national bird, the national symbol, into a welfare recipient. On the other hand, the eagles were working for the money. They were posing <\/emphasize>for pictures. It was free trade, which has now been impacted. That\u2019s what Jeff here is calling to talk about. So you were there 15 years ago, and you saw hundreds of these birds?<\/line>CALLER: Right, and nobody was feeding them, and that river right there is full of fish, and we would watch, and every once in a while an immature bald eagle would fly down and catch a fish.<\/line>RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, want. What do you mean, “immature” bald eagle? How can you possibly determine whether a bald eagle is immature?<\/line>CALLER: They don\u2019t get the bald, white feathers around their head until they\u2019re three or four years old.<\/line> RUSH: Okay, so you mean young. You don\u2019t mean immature as in childish?<\/line>CALLER: Right. Young bald eagles.<\/line>RUSH: Young bald eagles, because when I think of “immature,” I think the White House press corps.<\/line>CALLER: That, too.<\/line>RUSH: Okay.<\/line>CALLER: Anyway, every once in a while one of these would fly down and catch a fish, and all the adult eagles at that point in time would take off and rob, steal, dive bomb the lone —<\/line>RUSH: So?<\/line>CALLER: — young eagle until they took the fish away from him.<\/line><\/p>\n

RUSH: Right.<\/line>CALLER: This river is full of fish. We could see them swimming —<\/line>RUSH: Well —<\/line>CALLER: — and was easier to steal from the young than it was to catch their own fish.<\/line>RUSH: Now, there you go. Now you\u2019re trying to impugn the national bird. You\u2019re saying the national bird steals from its own offspring.<\/line>CALLER: Yeah.<\/line>RUSH: No.! There\u2019s a reason the eagle is a national bird. It is teaching its offspring a less<\/emphasize>on. It\u2019s teaching them a lesson. That\u2019s what\u2019s going on with this. It\u2019s teaching them to guard it, teaching them to understand that there are other predators out there. The bald eagle didn\u2019t go out and kill <\/emphasize>its own. It st<\/emphasize>ole from its own.<\/line>CALLER: Right.<\/line> RUSH: So -you know, we\u2019re looking at an advanced species in the way it raises and deals with its offspring. I\u2019ve got to find that picture that I took of the bald eagle when I was finishing up in Canada, and send it up to Koko so he can put it on the website. I\u2019ll do that they top of the hour. But nevertheless, I was in a fishing trip, Vancouver Island up in Canada — salmon fishing, and this is not an eagle story, but — I think I caught the first day like three salmon, and I had a fourth. I had a fourth roped in, and I was reeling it in, and the guide in the guide of the boat was, frankly, doing a lousy job of keeping the boat oriented, and we got the salmon within two or three feet of the boat, and he couldn\u2019t get the boat oriented so he could reach over and net the fish, and out of nowhere a giant seal — I thought it was a great white shark for a minute. A giant seal just, bam, <\/emphasize>surfaced and stole my salmon, right off the hook, and I looked at the guide, and I said, “That\u2019s not fair! (Laughing.) How does this happen!”<\/line>He said, “It\u2019s nature.” <\/line>Of course I knew it was. What was happening was, this sea lion was sitting around (a seal, whatever it was), was watching us do all the work while it hid underwater, we don\u2019t see it and the moment he had a break for it, bam! In one mouthful, that salmon, it was a huge fish, was gone. This is how it works out there. This is how it works in nature. This is how it works. Don\u2019t talk to me about animal rights ever again. I have watched too many animal shows where they kill and eat each other. I saw my salmon get stolen from me by some filthy seal; now you call here with this dreaded story trying to impugn the national bird saying they steal from their young! You\u2019re trying to make it sound like these are just Medicaid recipients or senior citizens stealing off their kids. That\u2019s not how it works in the land of bald eagles. They were teaching them life lessons there!<\/line>END TRANSCRIPT<\/line><\/p>\n

*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve heard about this. The City council of Homer, Alaska, has banned humans from feeding bald eagles. Now, for those of you that were educated in the public school system of this country, the bald eagle is our national bird. It is the national symbol, and starting next year, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nEl Rushbo's Experience with Bald Eagles - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2006\/02\/17\/el_rushbo_s_experience_with_bald_eagles\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"El Rushbo's Experience with Bald Eagles - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve heard about this. 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