Unable to sit still, Samantha did the only thing that felt remotely like action. She pulled out her phone, her fingers shaking, and posted a desperate plea on Facebook: “My cat was taken by a giant eagle in broad daylight. Please help me find him. Any information helps.”
The town’s online groups exploded within hours. Strangers she had never met flooded her inbox with messages. Some sent blurry photos of large birds soaring over fields. Others recounted half-remembered stories about hawks carrying off prey. A few detailed seeing eagles nearby, attaching grainy zoomed-in pictures to their claims.