Baby eagle's lesion falls off

The lesion on an internationally known eaglet has fallen off, but the bird will still undergo surgery Saturday, according to officials at the Wildlife Center of Virginia in Waynesboro.
The procedure, which was to include removal of the avian pox lesion, will focus on straightening the eaglet’s beak, Randy Huwa, executive vice president of the Wildlife Center, said Thursday
“That will give our surgical team much more time to focus on, and look at, some possibilities to straighten out the beak,” Huwa said.
The lesion fell off Wednesday.
What remained in its place “was a beautiful bed of granulation tissue, indicating both the end of the mass and recovery by the body,” said Dr. Dave McRuer, director of veterinary medicine at the Wildlife Center.
X-rays show no trace of the internal lesion, officials said.
For now, the eaglet will remain in isolation, but McRuer said the bird could be moved as soon as next week.
“Once the lesion fell off, that’s the go-ahead to tell us that the bird’s no longer infectious,” McRuer said.
The veterinarian said he wants to move the eaglet so that it can start flapping its wings, but because the bird still cannot eat on its own it must remain in isolation.
Huwa likened the surgery to an orthodontic procedure on a human.
McRuer outlined what he and Dr. R. Avery Bennett – professor of veterinary clinical medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – will be doing in Saturday’s surgery. McRuer and Bennett will be the lead surgeons on the eaglet.
“The plan is to try to shave off the [upper] beak on one side, and add some beak on the other side with some acrylics,” McRuer said. “We may have to do that with some wires and some pins, in addition to the acrylic.”
McRuer said they would also have to shave off the bottom of the upper beak to ensure that the top and bottom of the upper beak align.
“The goal is to align the [upper] beak so the bird can start eating on its own, and, as well, start preening its feathers,” McRuer said.
He said that wouldn’t be accomplished in total with this surgery. The doctors, he said, will be “trying to guide the beak back to a normal position.”
The beak’s full correction, McRuer said, would depend on symmetrical growth from the growth plate. The beak’s growth could continue to be altered for the rest of its life, viable for a captive bird, but not a wild one, he said.
The surgery is scheduled for Saturday morning at the Wildlife Center. Before the lesion fell off the eaglet, the surgery was scheduled to last from two to three hours. Huwa estimates a similar time length even without having to remove the mass.
The eaglet, who has received international attention through the center’s Web cam, has grown from 2.25 pounds when it was admitted May 22, to 7.7 pounds through Sunday. It was originally hatched at the Norfolk Botanical Garden in April.