A farmer found a newborn eagle chick that had been blown out of its nest in a storm. He took it to wife and she tucked it quickly under the welcoming wings of Mother Hen. The eagle grew up with the brood of chicks thinking he was a chicken.

picture source: forargyll.com/

A few weeks later a neighbour was startled to see the creature pecking and picking and scratching in the dust.  He lifted it into the air, saying, ‘You are an eagle.’  But it fluttered and squawked and jumped safely back onto the ground.  The farmer laughed.  ‘He’s grown up like a chicken; he thinks he is a chicken.’

The neighbour tried again.  He carried the eagle up to the roof of the hut and threw him out into the air, but the chick saw only the safe circle of his siblings down on the ground below. He flapped and scraped his way back again.  And the farmer and his children laughed fondly, for they accepted their strange gawky eagle chick.

But the neighbour would not give up.  Before dawn the next day, he traveled up into the mountains with the eagle. As the first rays of light began to pierce the sky, the man climbed onto the high ledge of a cliff.  He held the eagle up to the rising sun, and whispered, ‘It’s okay to try. Fly, eagle, fly!’  The eagle trembled as he looked into the light.  The wind ruffled his feathers and, as the sky flooded with brilliant gold, his true nature asserted itself.  He lifted his wings and began to fly.

Rosemarie Somaiah

Several sources including ‘Fly, Eagle, Fly!’ by Christopher Gregorowski