WATCH: Golden Eagle Grabs Baby — Maybe

It's a scene straight out of Hitchcock, and probably just as fake.

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[youtube=http://youtu.be/CE0Q904gtMI]

 

UPDATE: Yep. It’s a fake.

The United States of America chose the bald eagle as its symbol because it was fierce, fearless and strong, not because eagles are nice. Keep that in mind when you watch this video of a Golden eagle attempting to fly off with a baby.

The video, purportedly shot at a city park in Montreal, shows the raptor wheeling over a serene meadow, then all of a sudden swooping out of the sky and attempting to grab itself some drive-thru dinner in the form of a robust-looking toddler. The eagle, flummoxed by the child’s weight and fast-acting father, took off sans snack.

While the image is stunning and Hitchcockian, it is most likely fake.

Luckily for all us lazy internet sleuths, Gawker has already rounded up plenty of reasons why the video is probably a hoax, including the fact that, according to bird expert Kenn Kaufman, “the bird in the video is not a Golden Eagle, nor anything else that occurs in the wild in North America.” Plus, the evil eagle incident wasn’t covered in any Canadian news source, although that will probably change with the buzz building around the internet.

Even if it is fake, it’s fun to watch just for the excellent use of the Chariots of Fire theme song.

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