Eagle tried to snatch boy at Australian nature park

An eagle show at an Australian nature park narrowly avoided disaster when one of the animals nearly snatched a young boy in the audience Wednesday, the BBC reported.

A wedge-tailed eagle at the Alice Springs Desert Park in central Australia did not follow directions during a show to fly to a nearby log and swooped down on the child in the audience, witnesses told news outlets.

“The bird... flew over the crowd and tried to grab on to a young boy’s head,” Keenan Lucas, who was at the show, told NT News. “He screamed, the mother was distraught, and the presenters wrapped up the show very quickly. It looked as if the bird tried to pick him up like a small animal and take off with him.”

The event, which the park calls “Eagle Encounter,” offers visitors the chance to “get up close with Australia’s largest bird of Prey... [and] discover the interesting lives these magnificent birds live.”

A spokeswoman for the park confirmed to the BBC and the Guardian that the attack had occurred but that the boy was treated for superficial scratches.

“On Wednesday, 6 July, an incident occurred at the Alice Springs Desert Park where an eagle made contact with an audience member,” the spokeswoman said, according to the Guardian. “A thorough investigation regarding the circumstances behind this incident is under way and the eagle will be removed from the show while this investigation is ongoing.”

One of the attendees of the eagle show, Christine O’Connell, captured a photo of the bird mid-attack. In the photo, the child, in a green hoodie, tries to cover his face as the eagle — its widespread wings dwarfing the child — grabs the boy’s hood in its talons.

O’Connell, in her caption, described it as “[n]ot the sharpest photo but lucky just to snap it.” The boy, she said, was “very lucky” he was not hurt more severely.

The attack bears similarities to a hoax four years ago, in which students in Montreal created a fake video of an eagle briefly grabbing a small child. The video, which was fabricated for an animation and digital design class at Montreal's National Animation and Design Center, showed a bird picking up a small child being watched by his father, before dropping the child a few feet away.

Both the eagle and the child in the video were computer animations, according to a statement from the school.

This story was originally published July 12, 2016 at 2:01 PM with the headline "Eagle tried to snatch boy at Australian nature park."