Woman photographs eagle and prey on power line

EAST MISSOULA — A Montana woman photographing a bald eagle in a spruce tree near her house also made a picture of what was left of its prey — a fawn carcass dangling from a power line.

A power company lineman uses a pole to remove a young deer carcass that was dropped onto a power line. It is suspected the carcass was dropped after being snatched by an eagle in East Missoula. The incident caused a brief power outage.

Lee Bridges, of East Missoula, says she photographed the eagle Wednesday morning because she had never seen one so close to her house along the Clark Fork River.

At about the same time, a NorthWestern Energy employee responding to a power outage drove up. Bridges asked what caused the outage and he pointed at the line and said, "it looks like you've got a deer with wings."

The lineman told Bridges the fawn's carcass hit the first line and swung into another line, sparking the 30-minute outage.

The lineman said he'd never seen anything like it.