Animals: Uncle Sam & Elmer

Ten years before Tom Mooney went to jail, a farmer of Waterford, Conn. shot a golden eagle which had been raiding his chicken-run. The bird was only winged and the farmer took it to State Tree Warden Henry Fuller, who turned it over to Elmer Kenerson, New London’s husky Superintendent of Parks. An animal-lover who knew something about veterinary science, Elmer Kenerson set the big bird’s pinion, named it “Uncle Sam,” built it a wooden cage 30 ft. high and 20 ft. wide around a tree in New London’s wildish Riverside Park beside the Thames River. For 28 years Uncle Sam perched morosely in his tree while he and Elmer Kenerson grew old. Even after his job as park superintendent was abolished in 1925, the man took stale meat to the eagle twice every day. Kenerson could put his arm around the bird but whenever anyone else approached, Uncle Sam grew truculent, refused to eat, hopped to a higher limb. Once Kenerson turned down two strangers’ offer of $200 for the bird. Next day he found the cage spattered with blood and fragments of men’s clothing. He said the thieves were lucky to have escaped alive. Last fortnight a New London councilwoman proposed that the eagle be presented to Manhattan’s Central Park Zoo. Then a councilman dug up an old Connecticut law against caging eagles, announced that Uncle Sam had been illegally imprisoned all these years. “The best thing and the most humane thing to do with it,” wrote the New London Day’s columnist, “is to chloroform it as quickly as possible and remove the dismal and unsightly cage from the park.”

One day last week some passers-by saw Uncle Sam “dancing in convulsions.” When Elmer Kenerson, now 71, arrived, the eagle was dead. A piece of cake lay beside it. An autopsy was ordered to see if the eagle had been poisoned. When it was over, the physician reported that Uncle Sam had undoubtedly been poisoned but New London officials refused to press the investigation. Keeper Kenerson buried his eagle beneath the cage and had a small tombstone made, inscribed: UNCLE SAM GOLDEN EAGLE