...but was fortunately rescued.
Ok, this is not news. It happened in 1932 in Norway.
The story however is quite incredible and scientists don´t agree if this could have happened or not.
In 1932 an eagle snatched a three year old girl named Svanhild Hartvigsen that dwelt at courtyard on the farm Soeraa and flew her to Mount
Hagafjellet, a distance of several hundred meters. A search party discovered her some hours later on a narrow shelf in the face of the steep mountain.
Her cloths bore the distinct marks of the eagle claws, but the child was not injured. The whole affair is accounted "a miracle of Leka".
I came across a different version of the story while searching for an english article. That version I saw on several sites, they misspelled her
surname and was wrong about her age (3 years old, not 5...).
"On June 5,1932, Svanhild Hansen, a 42-pound five-year-old girl, was taken from her parents' Leka, Norway, farm by a huge eagle; the bird
transported her more than a mile until it dropped her on a high ledge and continued to circle overhead. When rescuers reached the ledge, the child was
asleep and, aside from a few small scratches, unharmed. Zoologist Hartvig Huitfeldt-Kaas, who spent a month investigating the story, pronounced it
"completely reliable." The eagle, if that is what it was, was seen on several subsequent occasions."
The most credible version of this story I think is this one (see section 5) :
Cultural information about Leka
Here is the bird:
"Haliaeetus albicilla" / "White-tailed Eagle" / "Havørn"
Could this bird have been strong enough to carry a 42-pound child to its eyrie in the mountains?
I personally can´t see any reason to doubt this story.
I believe it happened...