[imagesource:here]

Battle to the death, y’all.

OK, to be fair the eagle and the fox seem to emerge with their lives intact, but it’s been a while since we’ve seen a fox mid-meal being snatched up by an eagle.

Nature, hey – what a rush.

There’s a fox, pleased as punch and about to tuck in. Boom – wait for it:

That’s a bald eagle at San Juan Island National Historical Park, in the state of Washington, proving that the pecking order goes rabbit – fox – eagle.

This account via the Washington Post:

“Don’t worry: the fox was fine,” photographer Kevin Ebi wrote after he documented the brawl at the Washington state preserve, which ended with the fox falling from the eagle’s talons after an unsuccessful but impressive fight to keep the rabbit.

The rabbit was probably not fine — though it was partially at fault for the whole incident, according to Ebi.

Rabbits had “clear cut the prairie with their vast burrows,” the photographer wrote, displacing the red fox’s preferred food of berries and voles, and setting up the multipart confrontation of eagle beats fox beats rabbit beats vole.

Ebi wrote that he had expected the young fox to simply abandon the rabbit as soon the eagle came screeching in to take it. The birds are well-known kleptos, he wrote, and could easily snatch prey from much larger animals, including other eagles.

Fair play to the fox for fighting it out.

[source:washpost]