The 1990s. A friend took me into a Kazakh ranch at the foot of the Tianshan Mountains for an interview. It is a day, the blue sky is thousands of miles, and the white clouds are like cotton. Hundred mile pasture, full of cattle and sheep.
Suddenly, a huge golden eagle clutched a small child, like a black cloud floating overhead. I shouted in surprise: The old eagle is biting the child!
Unexpectedly, my Kazakh friend was indifferent to my surprise, and the child under the eagle's claws giggled happily.
I'm angry: You guys are going to fight the eagles, and save the children! Before the words could be heard, the golden eagle screamed and gently placed the child on the grass in front of the shepherd's tent.
A woman came out of the tent, patted the child who had just toddlers and said: Naughty child, you have gone far again, and you have to send you back!
What is the situation, is it the old eagle looking after the child?
★ Old Batuu said: One eagle is better than three wolves
The woman was the wife of old Batuu, and after scolding the child, she actually screamed into the distance. Old Batuu heard the sound of the horse and jumped off the horse and said loudly: I'm sorry, slow to wait for the guests!
The woman saw the man come back and was busy milking again. The child staggered to catch the lamb and play with it, only to be shaken by the lamb. Instead of crying, the child giggled and got up and chased the lamb.
I point to the child: the child runs everywhere, not afraid of being remembered by the steppe wolf? Old Batuu looked at the mischievous child and said, "It's all right." Are there eagles watching? I was surprised: can your golden eagle see children? Old Batuu was stunned: My golden eagle can graze sheep, why can't I watch children?
Old Batuu was only in his twenties, and somehow he had to add the word "old" to his name. He found it impolite to ask me back, and hurriedly explained: My eagle is a shepherd's eagle, one eagle is better than three dogs, of course, better than three wolves!
★ The lone wolf sneaked up on the lamb and was scratched by the golden eagle
Old Batuu saw me puzzled and hurriedly explained: The Golden Eagle is a hero in the air, its territory is more than a dozen miles around, and no matter how many sheep there are, they are under its airspace. It hunts rabbits and marmots in the steppe, and does not delay air patrols and herding sheep.
He stretched out his hands and said that as soon as he spotted a wolf approaching my flock, the golden eagle would swoop down and drive the wolf away. You don't know, the golden eagle has wings spread out more than two meters, and there are two steel claws, a hook mouth, which are the three major killers of the golden eagle.
The golden eagle's two wings are like iron, which can crush the head of the fox and stun the hungry wolf. Two claws can directly grasp the bones of the wolf fox.
Old Batuu learned from the wolf and said: The year before, a hungry wolf had quietly approached the sheep. I don't know how it dodged the eyes of the golden eagle. The wolf was so cunning that he bit the ear of a ewe with his mouth, and the wolf's tail whipped the ewe's ass as a whip, and drove the ewe out of the grass beach in an attempt to deceive the golden eagle.
The scream of the head sheep made me spot the wolf stealing the sheep, and I hurriedly cried out to the eagle who was eating rabbits on the grass beach. The golden eagle lifted off to see the hungry wolf chasing the sheep, and immediately shot down the arrow. Unexpectedly, the hungry wolf wanted to rely on the cover of the ewe and the golden eagle to maneuver around.
The golden eagle was furious, but a wing fanned onto the head of the ewe, and the ewe was directly fanned over the head.
The sheep fell. The wolf had nowhere to hide, only to flee for his life. The golden eagle chased after it, and several iron wings fanned the wolf dizzy. The wolf just wanted to get up and escape, but was chased by the golden eagle and grabbed a piece of flesh from his ass...
★ Last year, the three wolves attacked the sheep in three places, preparing to break each one
When I was amazed by the story of old Batuu's golden eagle driving away wolves, he said happily: Don't think that my eagle can only defeat one wolf, it can defeat three wolves at the same time!
Old Batuu did not wait for me to question, and hurriedly said: You have heard that I, in the spring of the next year, there are three wolves who come to beat my flock in the daytime. Fortunately, I added two sheepdogs to help the eagle guard the sheep.
However, the three wolves were defeated by my eagle... He sighed: This wolf is cunning, they are not attacking in groups, but attacking my flock from three directions. Three wolves attack my sheep from three directions, you say, how can my eagles still defend?
Without waiting for me to answer, he added that when the wolves attacked separately, the golden eagles all found out, but they had no choice but to attack the wolf who approached the sheep first. Only to see the eagle a swooping action, iron wings snapping combo. The wolf could not resist the blow and hurriedly turned his head to flee.
He said that wolves are not animals that suffer losses, and once they can't fight, they will flee and never love to fight. The golden eagle drove it away and flew back immediately, plunging its head down, its claws mercilessly grasping the head of the second wolf. The wolf couldn't bear the pain and grabbed the golden eagle violently with his claws. As soon as the golden eagle exerted a force, it grabbed a piece of flesh from the wolf's head with a whimper, carrying one ear. The wolf was in excruciating pain and had to flee into the wilderness.
★ The golden eagle catches the blind third wolf
Old Batuu spoke more and more vigorously: I saw that the golden eagle was victorious over a wolf, and immediately rode on his horse and waved a wolf stick, driving his horse to chase after the third wolf. At this moment, I suddenly noticed that this wolf had a large scar on its ass, and immediately remembered that this was a wolf that had been injured by a golden eagle last year. It seems that this year's three-wolf attack is also organized by it.
The Scar Wolf was cunning, and it used the method of attacking the three wolves separately to distract the Golden Eagle and let it lose sight of one or the other. And one of the three wolves succeeded, not only to avenge the previous year's claw, but also to have lamb to eat.
But Scar Wolf did not expect that this year, because the sheep had tripled and added two sheepdogs, each guarding the side of the flock, no matter which wolf wanted to attack the sheep, it was blocked by the sheepdog. This bought time for the Golden Eagle to fight the wolf.
As Scarface was being chased away by me, the golden eagle swooped down like an arrow. However, the golden eagle did not rush to kill the killer, but constantly hit the head of the scarred wolf with its iron wings.
The four-legged one definitely can't run the winged one. Scar Wolf was soon beaten by the golden eagle and could not run, so he had to lie on his back and fight against the golden eagle that was constantly diving in the air with a wolf mouth and four wolf claws.
The golden eagle knew that the dying scar wolf was powerful and not deceived, and after several rounds of land-to-air combat, it immediately spread its wings and flew away. Scarface did not know what the plan was, hurriedly turned over and fled, the golden eagle immediately plunged down, grabbed Scar Wolf's neck with one claw, flipped it to the ground, and took the opportunity to lock Scar Wolf's mouth with one claw. Scar Wolf suddenly lost his fighting power.
The golden eagle did not allow the Scar Wolf to fight back, and the claw that grabbed the neck suddenly grabbed the eyes of the Scar Wolf. Scar Wolf was blind, almost crazy, and rushed desperately into the depths of the wasteland.
★ The lone wolf steals the child and is killed by the golden eagle
I was thrilled to hear the story of the golden eagle of the old Batuu fighting the three wolves alone, but I did not expect him to point to the child who was playing with the neck of the sheep and said: This spring, it was the eagle who saved the child from the mouth of a lone wolf.
This spring, the toddler chased the lamb farther and farther away, out of the milking mother's sight, but was remembered by a lone wolf who stole the sheep.
The lone wolf attacked the sheep several times, but was stopped by the shepherd dog, and suddenly saw the child holding the lamb. So the lone wolf ignored the child, but suddenly flew towards the sheep.
Frightened, the flock hurriedly formed a "group of sheep" that encircled the lamb and the pregnant ewe to the core at the call of the head sheep. This position is that the sheep's ass is facing outwards, the sheep's head is facing inward, and the dense turns are squeezed together, and the sheep's butt is bitten by the wolf, but it can effectively prevent the wolf from breaking the throat of the sheep.
However, the lone wolf struck from the east to the west, taking advantage of the chaos of the sheep, turned around and pounced on the child, and then grabbed the child and ran.
The golden eagle suddenly found that the lone wolf had taken the child, and immediately swooped down with a scream, and with a few iron wings, he beat the lone wolf and threw the child around in a circle.
The lone wolf gave up his life to give up his child, and was trying to kill the child, but he was pounced on by the golden eagle, and one claw locked his mouth, and the other claw grabbed the wolf's eyes.
This time, the golden eagle did not loosen its claws, allowing the lone wolf to roll on the ground with it. Until I jumped off my horse and beat the lone wolf to death.
★ This sculpture was an abandoned sculpture picked up by old Batuu
At this moment, the golden eagle was hovering in the air, constantly emitting a dripping whistle. Old Batuu said, "The eagle heard me praising it!"
I pointed to the eagle and asked, "Where did this sculpture come from?" Old Batuu said: Picked up. He said that we Kazakhs like to raise eagles and hunt, so we like to go to the eagle nest on the cliff to dig up the eagle chicks and raise them back, raise them until five years later, release them to nature, and let them find a companion to breed. We continue to hunt eagles and chicks, domesticating and hunting.
I asked: Is the golden eagle released back? Old Batuu said that some came back and some did not come back. My eagle belongs to the kind that can't be driven away. I asked: Why? Answer: Because I picked it up.
Old Batuu said: Eagle loneliness. Generally only one egg is laid and one chick is born. If two chicks and three chicks are born, the eagles will inevitably repel each other and kill each other. Some were killed in the nest by the same nest brothers, and were torn apart by the old eagle and fed to the chicks. Some were pushed out of their nests by their brothers, fell off cliffs, or were killed or wounded. But the old eagle is cold, does not look for it, and only cares about feeding the eagle chicks in the nest.
I knew the temperament of the eagle, and immediately took the eagle home, and has been domesticating it and growing it into my shepherd eagle.
In addition, we Kazakhs have the art of carving, the family secret is not passed on, there is no written record, but it is passed on by word of mouth from generation to generation. My family's golden eagle can herd sheep, which is also the unique skill of my old Batu family! (About the author: Wang Tianxiang, senior journalist and writer, has published 42 monographs such as novels, written more than 200 TV series, created dozens of special TV films such as history, culture, scenery, and documentary, published hundreds of articles in various newspapers and periodicals, and published more than 1,000 online articles.) ）
(Special note: The picture in this article is selected from the Internet, and if the notice of infringement is deleted.) Thank you! ）