Web of Life

A giant bird swooping down and carrying away a child, something out of a fairytale or a comic book you might say. However, for P. H. Namali it was something all too real last Tuesday morning, which might just go down in the books as one of the strangest events of this century.

Making sure not to walk in places where the fishing nets were laid out in respect for their livelihood, Namali took us to the beach and showed us the spot where her son Dimuthu Madhushanka, 5, was almost carried off by what they called an eagle with an eight foot wide wing span!

Living in Ambalappola, Beruwala, Namali and her husband said Dimuthu is their only child."At around 9 o'clock in the morning, my son insisted on going down to the beach to fly his new kite," said Namali with a shudder. "He bought it at the market the day before and was very exited about it." So while he happily let his kite soar in the wind, Namali walked around collecting driftwood a few feet away from him. She went on to relive the moments that almost cost her Dimuthu's life. "The bird suddenly came swooping from behind him and caught him by the scruff of his T-shirt. It managed to carry him into the air for about three feet before letting go when I threw a piece of wood at it."

Initially in shock for a few seconds while her son was being carried away "with no strength to even shout out" Namali said her presence of mind came with her son's cries of help. "He was screaming for me and I just took the piece of wood in my hand and hurled it at the creature." She added that the wood struck the animals legs and it immediately let go of Dimuthu, landing the boy in a small stream that ran along the sand.

Calling her son the luckiest boy in the world, Namali showed us the scratches on his forehead and face. "No one would have believed this story if not for the injuries," said Namali saying that the doctors were completely stunned when she told them what happened. "They weighed him then and there and found he was 22 pounds heavy," she said proving the fact that the bird would have had to be enormous to be able to lift Dimuthu into the air. "There were a few people who saw this happening and who came running to help. They could not believe the size of the bird either," Namali added.

"This bird had been spotted about a day ago in the area. No one believed those people because they said an eagle that size cannot exist," Dimuthu's father Dhammika de Silva said. "I was a few feet away attending to some fish netting when I heard my wife scream." He described the bird as 8 feet long, completely white with black spots.

However, according to Dr. Ranjan Fernando, an environmentalist, the biggest eagle in the area is the Serpent Eagle, which has a wingspan of about three feet. "There are eagles in the mountainous area that grow up to fiv feet but they never venture below a certain altitude and they are certainly not able to carry a 5-year-old boy." He added that no birds of that size migrate to Sri Lanka and are not even in the Asian region.

Unsure as to what sort of an Eagle this could be, most of the people in Dimuthu's neighbourhood said they are now afraid to let their children out because of the bird. "We are afraid that this thing might carry our children away next," said one of their relatives. Some of the residents said that the eagle had been spotted carrying a dog away earlier in the morning.

Putting mystery bird aside, Namali said that she is thankful that her son is alive. "I was about to leave to Lebanon for work. Now after this, I decided not to leave," she smiled. "I never want to be away from my boy."