{"id":396371,"date":"2025-11-22T06:46:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T06:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/396371\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T06:46:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T06:46:14","slug":"bald-eagle-drops-cat-onto-moving-car-in-north-carolina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/396371\/","title":{"rendered":"Bald eagle drops cat onto moving car in North Carolina"},"content":{"rendered":"

The fur was really flying.<\/p>\n

A North Carolina driver had the ride of her life when a cat came crashing through her front windshield on the highway \u2014 after it was dropped by a bald eagle<\/a> overhead.<\/p>\n

Melissa Schlarb, the 28-year-old motorist, was driving to work around 8 a.m. Wednesday along US Route 74 near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park when the kitty corpse blasted through her vehicle.<\/p>\n

\"SmashedThe smashed windshield of 28-year-old Melissa Schlarb after a cat carcass fell from the sky. AP<\/p>\n

\u201cYou may not believe me, but I just had a bald eagle drop a cat through my windshield,\u201d she told the 911 dispatcher. \u201cIt absolutely shattered my windshield.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dispatcher, to her credit, calmly responded, \u201cOK. I do believe you, honestly,\u201d then laughed.<\/p>\n

Schlarb said she first spotted America\u2019s national bird<\/a> in the sky on her morning commute.<\/p>\n

\u201cI drive that road every single morning,\u201d Schlarb told WHAM 13 News<\/a>. \u201cBut this time, I did see the bald eagle coming from a distance, and I\u2019m not used to seeing them there, and I was like, \u2018Wow, that\u2019s amazing.’\u201d<\/p>\n

As she stared in awe, Schlarb realized that the eagle had something clenched in its talons. Soon, the cat corpse was falling from the sky and headed right for her \u2014 like a speeding bullet with nine lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could see the cat in my passenger seat,\u201d she said of the impact. \u201cI have guts all over me; there\u2019s glass everywhere. It sounded like a bomb went off. Of course, at that moment, I just slam on my brakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BaldThe cat slipped from the eagle\u2019s talons and shattered Schlarb\u2019s passenger side windshield. Glenn \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Schlarb was directed off the road by two other drivers, where she called 911.<\/p>\n

Through laughter, the dispatcher had one follow-up question: \u201cIs the cat still alive?\u201d<\/p>\n

Schlarb noted that it wasn\u2019t, and at that point had moved the cat from her car to the side of the road.<\/p>\n

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After the terrifying affair, Schlarb said she was \u201cdefinitely going to keep a closer eye\u201d on her own kitty.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear whether the doomed feline was alive when it crashed through Schlarb\u2019s car \u2014 though one wildlife expert said it may have been roadkill scavaged by the bald eagle.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut they can take animals the size of a cat,\u201d said Kendrick Weeks, Western Wildlife Diversity Program supervisor for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is much harder for them to take a live cat than a dead cat. They usually don\u2019t prey on something they don\u2019t find palatable. And, scavenging is a common behavior in bald eagles.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Post wires<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fur was really flying. A North Carolina driver had the ride of her life when a cat…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":396372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[5303,23930,9150,519,159,67,132,68,1154,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-396371","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-car-crashes","9":"tag-cat","10":"tag-eagles","11":"tag-north-carolina","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-us-news","17":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115592009665360009","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}