Kidnapping Bird of Prey

And if you think the baby's crying is bad, you should hear the ornithologists.

A very old, but still popular animal stereotype: a large predatory bird (usually an eagle or vulture) picks up a child or small animal from the ground and carries it off to its nest to be eaten.

This is mostly an Urban Legend, since anything weighing more than four pounds is far too heavy to be carried off by most of these birds, making this a case of Artistic License – Ornithology (especially if the bird in question is a vulture, since they don't generally go after live prey in the first place!). They prefer to Vertically Kidnap smaller animals. That said, there have been a handful of cases throughout history where babies or little children were merely attacked by large birds, and some eagles are perfectly capable of killing prey too large to actually carry off.

In general, it's also rare for raptors to carry off live prey, as the struggling victim would make flying difficult and potentially injure the raptor as it tries to free itself. Birds of prey typically kill their prey in the initial attack, and then either eat it on the ground or carry off the carcass. In fiction, however, it's not uncommon for birds of prey to fly off with their victims while they're still alive, due to the Rule of Drama.

Depending on the situation, this may be justified in-universe by the abductees being small enough for a bird of prey to realistically carry off — this may prove a real danger for Lilliputians, Talking Animals and people hit by a Shrink Ray — and/or the bird of prey just being very, very large.

Despite the trope name, it is by no means limited to birds. Any sort of big flying creature can be used in this role. Pterosaurs, in particular, often take on this role in prehistoric settings, in spite of the fact that not only were most of them also too light to carry off even a child, they didn't even have grasping feet!

Subtrope of Feathered Fiend. Not to be confused with Raptor Attack. Contrast with Noble Bird of Prey and Delivery Stork. The Roc Birds have their own trope. If the bird is simply waiting for a person to die instead of actively carrying them off, that's Circling Vultures.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Doraemon: Nobita's the Legend of the Sun King: One of Ledina's minions, the Animal Master, has the ability to control animals. As Doraemon and the gang, with their new ally Prince Tio, tries crossing a river, the Animal Master sics his vultures on the heroes, one of them which managed to knock out Tio and kidnap him before flying off.
• Pokémon:
  • This has happened several times in Pokémon: The Series, the first instance being when Ash was carried off by an Aerodactyl in Attack of the Prehistoric Pokémon.
  • On one occasion, a Skarmory kidnapped May and dropped her in a place that was forbidden to humans. The real threat wasn't the Skarmory, but rather the other hostile Pokémon in the area.
  • In Pokémon Adventures, the Masked Man had Ho-Oh kidnap about a half-dozen young kids so he could raise them as his minions. Green, in particular, developed a phobia of birds due to this.
  • The subseries 'The Legend of Thunder contains a benign example, with Jimmy's Beedrill flies away with Marina while escaping from the villain's Skarmory.
• The☆Ultraman has a benign, harmless monster called King Moa, who abducted Mutsumi by grabbing her in its talons and lifting her to it's nest in order to take care of her alongside it's baby moas.

Comic Books

• In Amulet, during a wyvern attack, one of them carries Miskit and Cogsley off, taking them back to its nest. They're thankfully later rescued by Vigo, but not before a baby wyvern has imprinted on Cogsley.
• Supergirl:
  • In Supergirl (1972) #2 "Death of a City!" Supergirl and her professor Allan Forsyte are attacked by a Satan Swallow, a giant Kryptonian bird of prey, as they are travelling through the outskirts of Kandor. The humongous predator easily captures and dumps both humans on its nest, built on top of a high spire, and leaves to look for its mate. Unfortunately for both hungry birds, they return after Supergirl has recovered her powers.
  • "The Super-Steed of Steel": In one scene, a bald eagle swoops down from the sky and flies off with a little girl called Bonnie. Fortunately for the toddler, Comet forces the eagle to relinquish its prey.
• Tintin: In Prisoners of the Sun, a large condor catches Tintin's dog, Snowy. Tintin actually climbs to the bird's nest in the mountains to rescue his dog.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Comic Cavalcade: In "The Vulture's Nest" giant vultures grab Etta Candy and Mimi right off their horses, though these vultures are later revealed to be humans wearing suits.
  • Volume 1: In the Impossible Tales Wonder Girl story in #107 Ronno the merboy gets grabbed by the giant Roc that lives on a spire near Paradise Island and Diana has to rescue him from the bird.

Fan Works

• A Boy, a Girl and a Dog: The Leithian Script: As Beren tells how he and Luthien were rescued from Angband by eagles, one of his comrades asks whether they were sacred eagles (who are really spirits embodied as gigantic eagles). Beren confirms this by pointing out that ordinary eagles cannot anybody anywhere. Except maybe babies.

Comic Strips

• Charles Addams did a strip where an adult human is being carried off in this fashion from a beach.. with the guy's wife running along underneath yelling up at him to drop the keys to their car.
• The Far Side:
  • One strip has a gopher-type critter being carried off by a raptor, with an onlooking survivor yelling the victim's name in despair.
  • Another strip shows an eagle in a nest surrounded by piles of hats and binoculars, implying that it has taken to eating birdwatchers.
• Nero:
  • In the album "De Bende van de Zwarte Kous", a vulture picks up the child Petoetje and carries him off.
  • The same happens to Nero's son, Adhemar, in the album "De Lolifanten".
  • In the album "De Vliegende Handschoen", various friends of Nero, including adults, are kidnapped by his pet eagle.
  • In the album "De Ring van Balderic" a statue of an eagle comes to life and carries off the little boy Clo-Clo.
• Popeye: The Sea Hag has a giant vulture who picks up people and flies them to her.

Fairy Tales

• In tales classified in the Aarne-Thomoson-Uther Index as type ATU 705A, "Born from a Fruit (or Fish)", an old man eats a fruit or some fish meat, becomes pregnant and gives birth to a girl. He abandons the child in the wilderness, and an eagle (or falcon, or condor, depending on the tale) swoops in and carries the baby to its nest to raise.

Films — Animated

• An American Tail: Fievel Goes West: There is a slightly altered version as Fievel is chased by a hawk whose first attempt to grab him fails and Fievel escapes into a burrow. Unfortunately, while backing away to the entrance from the scorpion within the burrow, the hawk this time catches Fievel and carries him off.
• Brave: After Lord Fergus and the other lords end up on the roof (with no bear) after a bear hunt through the castle, this trope is discussed when one of the lords sarcastically suggests that the bear was "carried away by a giant birdie".
• Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor: A roc carries Olive Oyl away. It later takes Popeye to a volcano to kill him, but Popeye wins out and roasts the bird.

Films — Live-Action

• In Arachnophobia, the original jungle spider is picked up by a crow and carried across town from the funeral parlor to a nearby farm. The crow drops dead out of the sky, fatally bitten by its prey, and the spider crawls away unhurt.
• The In-Laws: Vince tells a long story at dinner about giant Guatemalan tsetse flies carrying away children in their beaks.
  Sheldon: Beaks? Flies with beaks?
• In Jurassic Park III, a Pteranodon carries off a human boy.
• In the sequel to the above film, Jurassic World, we have a flock of Pteranodons doing this to people in the titular park's most populated area, as well as the baby dinosaurs housed in the nearby petting zoo. A particularly horrifying variant of this trope (possibly as a shout out to the above One Million Years BC example) happens to Claire's assistant, Zara, who is not only carried off, fought over, and dropped into a large body of water, but is also repeatedly dunked in the water by yet another Pteranodon and finally eaten alive by a giant Mosasaurus that had her sights on the Pteranodon. The same thing briefly happens to the main villain in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
• Happens briefly in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie. A Tengu Warrior picks up Kimberly with its feet and carries her across the battlefield, but drops her soon afterward.
• In the fantasy film Na Cha and the Seven Devils, one of the titular devils, the Eagle, morphs himself to his giant eagle form at one point to kidnap a child with his talons.
• A fairly famous example is One Million Years B.C., in which a Pteranodon does this to Loana the cavewoman, who is then freed (but injured) when the Pteranodon fights with another pterosaur.
• It happened on film as early as 1907 in Edwin S. Porter's "Rescued from an Eagle Nest". (See image above.)
• In Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed, the Pterodactyl Ghost takes Patrick away from Velma.
• Strays (2023): An eagle swoops in on the dogs during the middle of the movie, snatching Bug the Boston terrier up as its prey. Reggie the terrier helps free Bug from the eagle's talons, during which the eagle swears at them in eagle language. It's played for laughs during the Mushroom Samba scene, where Bug hallucinates the couch he loves humping seeing someone else: the eagle that nearly ate him earlier, which carries the couch away.
• Tyranno's Claw has a pterodactyl snatching the film's female lead to be fed to it's young.
• In Willow, an eagle ridden by a brownie kidnaps the infant princess that Willow is trying to protect.
• In The Wizard of Oz, the Flying Monkeys of the Wicked Witch of the West kidnap Dorothy and Toto by swooping down, picking them up and carrying them away through the air.

Literature

• Subverted in Animorphs #17. The Animorphs are in their bird of prey morphs, taking advantage of their superior vision and ability to fly to watch a concert without paying when they notice someone jumping out of a skyscraper to commit suicide. They fly over to him and catch his shirt and arms with their talons, though it's only enough to slow his fall enough that he isn't killed when he lands in the water.
• The Golden Dwarf in Book of Brownies has its minion, the Dragon-Bird, abducting captives for him by descending off the air and snatching them away using it's claws. This fate befell the Saucepan Man, and it's up to the three brownies to embark on a rescue mission.
• While not shown in The Cold Moons, it is mentioned that particularly hungry birds are known to carry off with young badger cubs (especially ones under a moon old).
• In one of The Draco Tavern stories there's a species of flying aliens that does this — they don't mean to harm anyone and just put the child down after a short distance; it's just a tradition from their predatory days. This behaviour however causes an understandable amount of alarm until they're convinced to do it as part of a theme park attraction, with children wearing special harnesses who've paid for the experience.
• In Dream Park, guide Kasan Maibang is nearly carried off by a giant hornbill early in the South Seas Treasure Game.
• In Firstborn, one of the wolf pups, a runt named Rider, is taken by an owl.
• Set up then subverted in the novel version of Jurassic Park; a Cearadactylus attempts to do this to Lex, but then it finds that she's too heavy for it to carry.
• Magehunter have a scenario where the titular Magehunter fights a Roc, and ends up being captured by the giant bird's talons and lifted to it's nest. Things are made even further complicated when halfway to the Roc's nest, both Magehunter and Roc gets attacked by a Winged Serpent. This moment is illustrated on the book's cover.
• Christopher Hart's Manga Mania: Fantasy Worlds has a couple of pages in the "Fantasy Monsters" section wherein he shows a step-by-step of creating creatures like this. They're depicted as big green humanoid monsters with birdlike features. It also features a splash panel of the classic image of a mother bird monster holding the (presumed) hero over her nest while her nestlings screech loudly, begging for food.
• Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH: In the first sequel, the mouse Timmy Frisby is briefly snatched up (and injured in the process, though not fatally thanks to the quick thinking of his rat friend Racso) by an owl, until he yells his full name. The owl then drops him, since it was positively acquainted with his mother, whom it soon finds and apologizes to for its actions, mistakenly believing it had accidentally killed Timmy.
• Discussed in Swindle; one of the In-Universe theories about the Rockford house is that it's cursed by a baby that was carried off and killed by a chicken hawk. The curse apparently causes Rapid Aging of some sort.
• Tales for the Midnight Hour: "The Gooney Birds" tells about a troop of scouts who find evidence of larger and larger gooney birds while on a camping trip. At the end, the gooney birds carry them all away.
• The Thinking Machine: This is proposed as a solution to the vanishing of Baby Blake in "The Disappearance of Baby Blake". Van Dusen shoots the idea down by pointing out that no eagle found in the local area would have the strength to lift a two year old. Of course, the real solution turns out to be stranger (and even less likely).
• Les Voyageurs Sans Souci: Inverted when Golden Eagle carries off 11 years Rosalie -who had been kidnapped by the queen of birds- back home.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: One of the noble houses of Dorne is House Blackmont, who's Coat of Arms is a vulture clutching a baby on its claws on a yellow field.
• Warrior Cats: Raptorial birds appear as dangerous foes on several occasions. Justified, as the main characters are feral cats and regular-sized hawks and eagles really are dangerous potential predators from their point of view:
  • Snowkit gets kidnapped by a hawk despite his mom, Speckletail, trying to get him back. In large part, this was due to his deafness preventing him from hearing the rest of the Clan warning him about the hawk.
  • In Sign of the Moon, Jayfeather acts as bait for an eagle to steal, so that the Ancients can learn how to hunt them. At the end of the book, Swoop, a Tribe cat, is taken by an eagle while saving one of the Tribe Invaders.
  • In the first Dawn of the Clans book, The Sun Trail, it even happens to an adult cat, Bright Stream, while travelling through the mountains. It didn't help that she was pregnant.

Live-Action TV

• The Beverly Hillbillies: In the first episode, "The Clampetts Strike Oil", Granny thinks a giant bird is carrying off a man. It's really a helicopter lowering down a geologist.
• Kamen Rider Double has a "supercharged" example with the Quetzalcoatlus Dopant, a giant bird-like Monster of the Week in Episode 35. Doctor Isaka sets one after Nagi, a bird-guide at the Fuuto zoo and the person who's meant to use the Quetzalcoatlus Memory, in order to further instill fear in her heart by showing her the monster that the Memory will turn her into. And he uses it on an unsuspecting parrot, who immediately grabs Nagi by her backpack. It takes Kamen Rider Double and Accel's Gunner-A unit working together to save Nagi from the Dopant's grasp and defeat it. (And the parrot flies away, completely unharmed.)

Music Videos

• In the Animated Music Video for "People Got a Lotta Nerve" by Neko Case, the protagonist enters a house full of animals, including two hawks adorned in falconry hoods. When she attempts to shoot a monkey, the hawks pick her up and carry her to the orca whose stomach she escaped from earlier. The hawks drop her, and the orca swallows her back up.

Mythology

• Classical Mythology: Zeus kidnapped Ganymede in the form of an eagle, although not for the purpose of eating.

Urban Legends

• The Lawndale Incident. On July 25, 1977, as the story goes, a ten-year-old boy named Marlon Lowe was playing outside his home when a pair of gigantic birds flew overhead. One of them swooped down and snatched Marlon up, carried him a few feet, and then dropped him unharmed onto the ground after his mother chased after it shouting. It's hard to say how likely this incident is to have happened; skeptics have suggested that the bird that "carried" Marlon may have actually been a normal raptor that he had mistakenly believed to be larger than it was due to the perspective. Curiously, the description of the birds in question nigh-perfectly matches that of the Andean condor, right down to the wingspan (ten feet). However, it doesn't quite add up even then, as condor talons are neither strong enough to carry a human nor shaped for grasping the way that, say, an eagle's talons are. Also, needless to say, the Andean condor is not native to the Midwestern United States.
• A similar story, dating back to 1932, tells of a three-year-old girl named Svanhild Hansen who was allegedly carried off by a white-tailed sea eagle before being deposited on a cliffside, where a search party found her. As with the Lawndale Incident, it's hard to say whether this is true or not. Even if a white-tailed sea eagle could carry something larger than itself, they usually kill their victims before flying off with them, which would make the fact she survived bizarre to say the least.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The original Monster Manual had an illustration of a roc, which conveys scale by depicting it in the act of carrying off a live elephant.
  • The solo D&D module "Eye of the Serpent" started with this trope, as the player character is scooped up by a roc and dropped off in its nest on a mountaintop. The adventure itself consists of finding a safe way back down.

Theme Parks

• Skull Island: Reign of Kong at Universal's Islands of Adventure has a scene where a Terapusmordax (basically a giant bat) snatches up one of the Eighth Wonder Expedition crew members and flies off with her. This does not last long, though, as in the next scene she is able to break free by cutting one of its legs off.

Video Games

• Big Karnak (1991 old NES game) have you assuming the role of a Pharaoh warrior out to rescue his kidnapped wife, abducted by a giant personification of Horus snatching her out of her chariot in the game's opening FMV.
• In Far Cry 4 the local eagles hunt by carrying a live animal up high and then dropping it to its death. Though they don't try this with humans (merely swooping down and clawing viciously,) they are apparently strong enough to carry a struggling mountain goat.
• In King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!, Graham gets kidnapped by a Roc. Funnily enough, he's rescued by an eagle he'd befriended earlier in the same fashion.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The plot of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker begins when Link's sister is carried off by the massive plumed vulture, Helmaroc King.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has a more benevolent example. After climbing Death Mountain as a child, Link meets a large owl named Kaepora Gaebora, who offers him a shortcut back down. If the player accepts, Link will be lifted up and flown down the mountain, to be dropped off at Kakariko Village at the base.
    • Alternatively, while not a bird and appearing in several Zelda games, the Wallmaster, a giant zombified hand enemy, drops down on top of you to take you back to the entrance of the dungeon.
• In the old Edutainment Game Odell Lake, one of the ways for your fish to die was by being caught and eaten by an osprey if you failed to dive to deep water quickly enough.
• In the 2009 Gameloft version of The Oregon Trail, one of the random events that can occur during the trails is a eagle appearing in the background. When that happens, you have only a second to touch the screen to shoot the eagle or else it will take one of your four members. There is a split 50/50 chance that the member will either be found 1-2 days later, or worse; the member never being seen again and thus being killed off entirely.
• Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time has the Pterosaurs in Jurassic Marsh. They will grab a standard-size zombie, fly it over to the square closest to the house, then turn it around, allowing the zombie to eat your defences from behind. If charmed by the Perfume-Shroom, a Pterosaur will instead grab a zombie and fly away with it for a One-Hit Kill.
• In the Popeye arcade game, Olive would get kidnapped by one of the Sea Hag's vultures on every third stage, and Popeye needed to catch falling letters that spelled "HELP" to build a ladder to climb up and rescue her.
• Primal Carnage: The Pteranodon can kill humans by grabbing them with its feet and dropping them from a fatal height or into a bottomless pit. This is an inescapable One-Hit Kill attack; the only way to get free is for a teammate to shoot the pterosaur before it gets too high or goes over a cliff. Notably, the other playable pterosaurs species, Tupandactylus, cannot attack like this, instead slamming on the ground to unleash a powerful shockwave.
• Pyre actually provides a romantic version of this trope, when Hedwyn tells the tale of how, after meeting on the battlefield and falling in Love at First Sight, his Harp sweetheart grabbed him and flew away with him.
• In one stage of RiME, there's a large bird-like monster that will snatch the protagonist if he stays out in the open too long.
• In Seiklus, atop the tree in the first area you can get snatched by a large eagle who will then drop you off at the rim of volcano.
• Shelter (2013): The mother badger must watch out for an eagle that will swoop down and take one of its cubs. At the end of the game the mother gets taken by the eagle while her cubs escape.
• During the Lost Kingdom chapter of Super Mario Odyssey, Cappy is temporarily captured by a Klepto, forcing Mario to find a way to get him back without any of his cap abilities. After breaking the moon rock in the Lost Kingdom, another level opens up that requires Mario to get Cappy back from Klepto.
• Super Smash Bros. doesn't have a "natural" example but uses one in the "beetle" item that takes the grabbed fighter away. Somewhat fittingly the damsels of their respective series are taken away faster than the males who either kidnap them or save them.
• Arietta has one of her pets pull this on Luke in Tales of the Abyss. It works the first time; the second attempt is met with a burst of flame courtesy of Mieu.
• Gray Mann in Team Fortress 2 was carried off by a eagle shortly after he and his brothers were born. It's slightly inverted, as Gray's father was about to kill him just before the eagle came by, and said eagle raised Gray as its own child until Gray killed and ate all of the eagles.

Web Animation

• RWBY: Among the Creatures of Grimm are monstrous ravens and bats called Nevermores and Ravagers, respectively. Both types can reach huge sizes that are capable of swooping down from above and carrying off the hapless people they grab. They can easily carry full-grown adults. During the Battle of Beacon, Roy from Team BRNZ is carried off by a Nevermore; after the Battle of Atlas, Atlesian refugees who survive the trip to Vacuo immediately run into Ravagers, who swoop out of a sandstorm to carry several away.

Webcomics

• In Latchkey Kingdom, Baron Boron's servant is carried off by the Feenix while he's trying to hunt it. His reaction is disappointment that he'll have to find some replacement help.
• Pixie and Brutus: One comic opens with a hawk swooping down to grab the oblivious Pixie as she admires a flower... only for Brutus to grab it in his mouth mid-swoop and carry it off-panel.
  • Another comic has an eagle successfully nab Pixie while Brutus is napping. The eagle falls victim to Pixie's innocent obliviousness and decides to adopt her instead of feeding her to their chicks.
• Scurry: In Chapter 3, the mouse Pict attempts to hide from a group of hungry cats inside a fallen birdhouse. This by and large works fine, until an eagle swoops down from the sky, grabs the birdhouse in its talons, and carries it and Pict away.
• In Yokoka's Quest, in Kalliv's flashback dream, while he's in mouse form he gets snatched away by a hawk-wolf, and is only dropped because a boar-mandrill attacks the hawk-wolf.

Web Original

• A video of a golden eagle attempting to snatch a child from a Montreal park. It was later revealed to have been created as a student project, but not before becoming an Internet sensation, amassing ten million views in a little over 24 hours.
• Chorocojo's character Sammy, from the Pokemon: Fire Red series, is eventually revealed to have become a shut-in Gamer Chick Otaku Surrogate after being nearly carried off by a Skarmory as a child. She hates large bird Pokemon as a result, especially Skarmory.
• The French animated short Inka Bola has a small child abducted by a large bird and brought to its nest... only to have the child eat them all in the credits.
• Tetrapod Zoology covered this in its very first post. The conclusion was that a large eagle could definitely kill a small child, but not carry one off.

Western Animation

• Happens to BMO in Adventure Time.
• One episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender saw Momo carried off by a buzzard-wasp. Said buzzard-wasp was struck down by Aang mere moments later.
• The Babaloos: A Thieving Magpie serves this role in one episode by carrying Mrs. Fork off to add to its collection of shiny things.
• Ben 10: Gwen gets carried off by a cockatoo mutated by Dr. Animo, and Ben's first attempt to save her as Fourarms ends with him falling out of the sky. The cockatoo leaves Gwen on top of the Washington Monument when it gets called back by Dr. Animo, and Ben is able to rescue Gwen as Stinkfly.
• In Bilby, an albatross chick is snatched by what appears to be a white-bellied sea eagle.
• Early in the Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels episode "Cavey's Mexicali 500", Captain Caveman is dreaming that he and Taffy are on a small island when a giant bird seizes Taffy and flies off with her. Cavey flies off to rescue her, and then his alarm clock bird interrupts his dream.
• Double subverted in an episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog. A gigantic bird carries Muriel off, seemingly wanting to eat her, but it turns out she just wanted Muriel to look after her hatchlings while she [the mother bird] was away. The double subversion comes when she threatens to eat Muriel if she comes back to find that anything bad happened to her babies.
• Danger Mouse: Penfold is plucked by an eagle (The Odd Ball Runaround) who mistakes the football he's holding for him stealing one of its eggs.
• In the pilot episode of Darkwing Duck, Taurus Bulba has a pet condor, which he uses to kidnap Heartwarming Orphan Gosalyn.
• Dino-Boy: At one time, Tod gets carried off by a Pterosaur, then a Rhamphorhynchus fly's by to attack it releasing Tod from its claws.
• In the Futurama episode "A Clockwork Origin", Fry gets carried off by a robotic Pteranodon. Although it attempts to feed Fry to its mechanical offspring, he survives the experience.
• In Gravity Falls Waddles gets taken by a Pterodactyl which takes him to its underground nest where dinosaurs were sealed in tree sap. The crew of the Mystery Shack must go down to rescue him before he becomes lunch for the dinosaurs.
• Happens three times in the Grojband episode "The Snuffles with Snarffles" where an eagle carries off two rats and Snarffles, the titular dog.
• In Jonny Quest, Turu the Pteranodon is used by the villain of the episode to kidnap Amazonian villagers to work in his mine.
• A more realistic example in The Lion Guard. The villain of the episode "Ono and the Egg" is an African harrier-hawk named Mpishi who invades the Pride Lands (where hawks or harrier-hawks are not allowed in as they do not have a territory there) searching for rare prey to carry off and eat, with said prey being small animals such as hyraxes and hares. Near the end of the episode, she carries off the newborn chick of Kulinda the hamerkop making it a literal kidnapping, but she gets stopped by the combined might of Ono and Kulinda.
• Mighty Mouse cartoon "Gypsy Life" does this with bats, as bats swoop down on a caravan of mice and one of them carries the pretty girl mouse away. Mighty Mouse comes to the rescue, of course.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "Pinkie Apple Pie", there's a minor Running Gag where the Apple family and Pinkie drop something they need in the water while rafting down a river, the object is grabbed an animal, and the animal is immediately snatched away by a bald eagle. The first example is fairly realistic — a fish grabs the group's map and is carried off — and the second more exaggerated — their spare wheel falls in the water, a duck puts its head through the spokes, and the eagle grabs the wheel's rim and carries it and the duck away.
  • There’s a roc in “Molt Down” that carries off Rarity and Zecora. Twilight Sparkle can’t get a good hit with her Beam Spam, but after Spike finishes molting and gets wings, he distracts the bird while Twilight finally manages to zap it and make it let go.
• The Popeye two-reeler Popeye Meets Sindbad The Sailor has our hero thrown to Sindbad's giant vulture who flies off with him to a distant island. Popeye returns, having turned the vulture into so much roast chicken.
• In the South Park episode "Cripple Fight", Timmy's attempt to get rid of Jimmy involves dressing him in an orange coat just like Kenny's so he will die. Jimmy then proceeds to suffer a series of near-fatal accidents, one of which is an eagle that attempts to carry him off.
• The Transformers:
  • In "Dinobot Island", Spike is caught in this way by a Dimorphodon. Swoop has to save him.
  • Laserbeak often picks up and carries people off, though to bring them to Megatron, not to feed them to anybody.
  • Conversely, the Animated version of Swoop kidnapped Sari this way when Prometheus Black forced the Dinobots to become his minions.
• Total Drama:
  • While DJ and his pet bunny are relaxing in the sun in "Haunte Camp-ture", an eagle flies by and snatches up the critter. For whatever reason, the bird lets go off the bunny several meters further, which causes it to fall on the barbecue. It escapes with only an Ash Face.
  • Duncan takes a large egg as food after getting stranded in "Camp Castaways". The egg's mother, a monstrous goose, tracks him down and in one swoop picks him and the egg up. Gwen lassoes herself onto Duncan's shoe and gets carried along until the bird drops the both of them.
  • In "Celebrity Manhunt's TDA Reunion Show", a gopher accepts its fate as the contestants' bus drives off a cliff and comes falling downwards onto the critter. The bus comes to a standstill just above the gopher courtesy of the band of Leshawna's quality bra. The gopher is relieved for half a second when it gets dragged off by an eagle swooping in.
  • In her audition tape, Dawn holds up a squirrel in reverence of nature. It gets snatched up by an eagle.
• Total DramaRama: In "Last Mom Standing", Chef's Mom and Leshawna's Grandma drag the children into aerial combat. At the last second before their planes crash, they activate the ejection seats to prevent any deaths. As Cody parachutes downwards, he cheerily exclaims that everyone survives right before an eagle snatches him out of the sky and flies off with him.

Real Life

• It's more common for this to happen to pets than to children; it's advised not to let a small dog out unattended where there are hawks or eagles, since a fenced-in yard, as good as it is for preventing some forms of harm to your dog, won't actually stop a bird. Great horned owls have a particular taste for cats, and are potentially large enough to carry off a small kitten. Of course, they generally kill the cat first, unlike this trope's usual depictions.
• Female harpy eagles catch live prey like sloths and monkeys up to 20 pounds. Theoretically they could carry off a small child, but there's no record of them actually attacking humans.

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