Eagles are Alaskan Pigeons

On one of the icons at St. Michael's Church in Sitka you can see an image of St. Innocent (Veniaminov) with a large eagle on his shoulder.

The story of this image is very touching.

One day the saint was climbing the mountains and heard the cry of a wounded bird. He approached and saw that an eagle had hurt its wing and was entangled in the bushes. And so the lord picked it up and came out.

After that the Aleuts began to notice a strange thing.

"It is strange," they said, "eagles are dragging chickens away from everybody else, but none of the lord's chickens was dragged away.

And one day a certain Aleut went to the temple and saw a big eagle sitting on the road in front of the temple and would not let him in. He decided to kill the bird, but he thought that he needed a blessing first. He went to the lord, but he did not give his blessing, so he went to the church to see what was happening there.

It turned out to be the same eagle that the saint had cured. The eagle bowed at his feet, then flew up and sat on his shoulder.

This, of course, made a great impression on the Aleuts.

Icon by Fr. Silouan Justiniano