When you click the video on Osceola the Hangliding Eagle’s website, Mr. Mister blares out its biggest hit. “Take these broken wings, and learn to fly again, learn to live so free.” Ok, so the song – in all its synthesizer-spangled glory – crosses the line on cheesy. But based on the story of Osceola and his handler, John Stokes, it couldn’t be more fitting.
Osceola’s broken wing came not from a heartbreaking lost love like Mr. Mister sings about, but from a bullet. The bird was found shot near Osceola, Arkansas with a badly infected left wing that would eventually have to be amputated.
Where the sad story goes on the rebound, just as the song says, is when Osceola got a chance to fly again – harnessed into Stokes’ hang glider. “It’s not flying as he knows it, but it’s as close as I can give him,” says Stokes, a Dade County, Georgia resident who has recently published a book about the adventure, “An Eagle Sky: My Life as a Birdman.” The e-book ($4.99) is available for download on Smashwords. com. Stokes, who shares his hometown of New Albany, Miss., with William Faulkner, says he’s been working on the book since 2001. “I’ll never be a Faulkner or a Hemmingway or something like that, I just had a story to tell,” he says.
While Osceola’s recovery story is unusual enough to have garnered attention from “Good Morning America” and Reader’s Digest, his injury is unfortunately not unique. Eagles and other birds of prey are occasionally shot, despite the threat of hefty fines and other penalties.
No witnesses have ever come forward from that day in January 1983, but Stokes imagines a rapid, wildly spiraling descent before Osceola smashed into the trees.”