THE EAGLE THAT CAME TO VISIT !

The eagle that came to visit
By Hamilton Wende BBC, Zambia.

The crash was terrifyingly loud. I was sitting upright naked in bed in my hotel room when a spray of glass shards shot across the room covering the bed and floor. It left me utterly disorientated.
Eagles and omens are part of African and Western mythology. My mind raced back to the war zones I had covered. Explosions or gunfire that I had experienced in Baghdad, Congo, or the townships in South Africa all came flooding back to me.
But this was a quiet Sunday morning in downtown Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, a country that has never known war, and it just did not make any kind of sense.
My hands were shaking slightly and my head spinning as I threw back the covers and scrambled out of bed.
Lying on the carpet below the shattered window was an eagle. It was, well, spread-eagled on its back amid the shards of broken glass.
Hauntingly beautiful
For a moment I stood there, transfixed, staring at this bizarre phenomenon.
The great sandy-coloured bird looked almost human in its semi-conscious distress. Its large wings were fully extended to the length of my own arms, its feet opening and shutting uncontrollably, its eyes fluttering half-open.
I held it in my hands for a few moments, aware of the strange paradox of vulnerability and power contained in its warm, surprisingly light body.
There was something hauntingly beautiful in the deep brown colour of its eyes, in the curve of its sharp talons and in its long scythe-like beak that would tear the flesh of my face and arms to shreds in panicked incomprehension if I picked it up.
I did not know what to do next. I knew I had to act before it regained full consciousness.
First I ran into the bathroom and wrapped a towel around my waist, partly to protect my dignity and partly to protect everything else.
Panicky moments

African snake eagles can have wing spans of six feet or more. I then tried to open the door, which led onto a balcony so the bird would have an escape route. But the door kept slamming shut, on an automatic spring, so somehow I managed to wedge it open with a plastic waste paper basket.
All the while the eagle was beginning to wake up and stare at me with increasingly bright and it seemed to me, angry eyes, as if it blamed me for its predicament.
Finally, I slipped on a pair of sandals and grabbed another towel. In a sliding, and certainly indecorous, series of panicky movements, I rushed across the sea of broken glass and wrapped a towel around the eagle.
Eagles and omens have been part of both African and Western mythology since earliest times
I held it in my hands for a few moments, aware of the strange paradox of vulnerability and power contained in its warm, surprisingly light body. Its head was held straight on its shoulders. It was clearly coming to. I threw it gently out through the remains of the window. It stretched its wings and flew unharmed into a nearby tree.
As I got dressed I found myself wondering what extraordinary circumstance had brought an eagle to crash through my window. There seemed something both wonderful and vaguely disturbing about it.
Bad omen
My Zambian colleague was visibly distressed when I told him. "It is a bad omen," he said. "Most people here believe that something terrible will happen to you now."
I did not want to believe him, but secretly I was uncomfortable. Eagles and omens have been part of both African and Western mythology since earliest times and we cannot shake off our primal psychological feelings that easily.
The front manager was both fascinated and appalled. "I must make an immediate physical inspection," he said, and soon my room was filled with hotel staff staring open-mouthed at the litter of broken glass and feathers.
The story spread quickly through the hotel, becoming a kind of Aesop's Fable for the age of air-conditioning.
"We have found the bird," the security manager told me at breakfast. I was escorted to a room beneath the kitchen where, with a dramatic flourish, he pulled a dead pigeon out of a drawer.
"No," I told him. "It was an eagle. A big eagle". I spread my arms out to make my point.
"I told you so," a young security guard said triumphantly to his boss. "It was chasing that little bird. The pigeon hit the window first and then the eagle crashed through the glass."
The case had been solved.
Seeking protection
But there was still the lingering omen to be cleared up. They gave me a new room, and all the next day, the staff looked at me curiously. "No birds this morning?" one of the elevator technicians asked.
Finally, the young security guard came to me in the lobby. "You must not be worried," he said, "about the meaning of what happened. It is a good sign. That pigeon was seeking your protection. It means you are man who has kindness."
Of course, I had not the heart to point out the irony that it was the pigeon which died, and the eagle which was saved.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 24 March, 2007 at 1100 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.
BBC NEWS REPORT.