A young Canadian conservation officer in Sault Ste. Marie, Canada, shared the following experience with me as I was crossing the border into Michigan. I noticed he wasn’t wearing a badge on his jacket and curiously inquired about it. He pulled his badge from his pocket and stated, “See, I do have a badge, but let me tell you what happened.” He then relayed this extraordinary story . . .
I wanted to kick myself. What kind of a police officer loses his badge? But that is what I’d done. And, in the middle of the woods, of all places! I searched and searched, but it was a losing battle. The thick layer of fallen bark and leaves was an ideal place for a badge to remain hidden. Every time I thought I saw something, shadows would move across the ground, revealing that what I had seen was only a glint of light filtering down through the leaves. Nevertheless, I returned to the woods the next day and the next, each time retracing my steps, even getting down on my hands and knees . . . but to no avail. It looked like I would have to break down and report the loss of my most treasured possession.
Reluctantly, I decided I would make a report today; after all, somebody else might find it and use it illegally to impersonate a police officer. My cheeks burned as I thought about the ribbing I would get from everybody in the Ontario Provincial Police Department when they learned that I had lost my badge.
But an unexpected assignment prevented me from sitting at my desk and writing up my report. A severe storm had ripped through the northernmost section of Ontario, more than one hundred miles away, and I was asked to travel there to report on the extent of the damage. I still hadn’t given up on my badge, and as I drove north I said a prayer that I would find it.
When I arrived at the designated area, I found the forest was terribly distressed after the storm. Old mossy trees, pines, limbs, and brush had fallen everywhere chaotically. It looked as though the wind had lifted most of the trees up and thrown them down into a pile of debris. I noticed an eagle’s nest had toppled, and the tree in which it had been built was nearly upended. What if there were baby eagles in the nest? I felt a strong urge to investigate. If there were birds in it, I could transfer them to a wildlife refuge.
Carefully I picked my way through black timber, rocks, fallen trees, and brush, climbing and tripping as I made my way awkwardly through the devastated landscape. I expected the worst—the mother dead and her eaglets injured, starved, thirsty, perhaps the whole family dead.
To my surprise, the nest was empty! I sifted through the leaves and bark—mother and babies had vacated the nest, and there was not a sign of disaster to the family. Relieved, I stepped back to admire how well the nest was put together and how cleverly constructed. This was the first time I had seen an eagle’s nest close up. Just the fact it had come down intact seemed a miracle. And that’s when I glimpsed something shiny sparkling through the leaves and sticks. I picked into the lining of the nest, and there, nestled safely inside, was my badge!
For a moment, I couldn’t believe it. To say that I was astounded would be an understatement. I thought I was dreaming. The eagle had recognized a treasure and carried it to the safest place she knew, her home. And I, concerned about the safety of her children, had found it. What was the likelihood of such a sequence of events being just coincidence? How was it that I was the person chosen to drive one hundred miles to a forest previously unknown to me? If the eagle had not found my badge and carried it off for safe-keeping, perhaps I might never have seen it again. And why did I feel such an urge to look inside the nest? What humbled me the most was the complex series of steps I was led to take. And I didn’t even know it when I took them!