Jeff Guidry’s face was bristly with a half-week- old beard when he first felt the lump on his neck.
He decided to shave but ignored the lump. He figured it would go away.
It didn’t.
His wife, Lynda Robertson, convinced him a month later to go to the doctor. The diagnosis: Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer that kills thousands each year.
Guidry was mad that his life was at the least interrupted by chemotherapy, and maybe ending.
So he turned to an unusual friend for help: a bald eagle.
That was in 2000. Now, the Monroe resident is publishing a book about his extraordinary bond with the bird. Interviews are lining up. Guidry may be on National Public Radio in Seattle. His publicist wants to know if he can bring Freedom to New York.
Guidry tells the eagle that rats live in the city. She gives a contented-sounding chirp.
“We just grow closer all the time,” he said.
Freedom also faced death.
In 1998, the young eagle fell from her nest in Edmonds, breaking bones in both wings.
She was starving and covered in lice by the time she was brought to the Sarvey Wildlife Care Center in Arlington. Doctors put pins in her hollow bones and bound her wings. She had about two months to prove she could survive. Otherwise, she would have to be put down.
Guidry, a volunteer at the center, knew he wasn’t supposed to grow attached to animals. He made an exception.
He started driving 45 minutes a few times each week to visit from his home, then in Bothell. He would talk to the eagle. She would just lay there on a bed of newspaper, staring at him with brown eyes, unwilling or unable to walk.
The day before she was going to be euthanized, Guidry visited. He didn’t want to say goodbye.
He didn’t have to. She was standing in her cage.
She couldn’t be released — her left wing would never fully extend — but she would live.
Guidry kept visiting Freedom after his diagnosis.
He walked in the woods with her perched on his arm when he felt strong. Like all bald eagles, the feathers on her head were still brown with youth. He decided he would beat the disease, if only to see her regal white cap.
“As crazy as that sounds, that was my reasoning,” he said.
Then the dreams started. The first came around his third cycle of chemotherapy. Freedom was flying through his veins, hunting dark cancer cells, crushing them in her talons.
He started using visualization techniques. One book recommended cancer victims think of sharks, imagining them destroying malignant cells. He thought of Freedom.
“Without her, I don’t know that I would have lived,” he said.
Days after Thanksgiving 2000, he learned the cancer was gone. He and his wife were exhausted with relief.
He went to visit Freedom. It was misty and cold when he took her out and walked up a hill.
He stopped, and she wrapped both wings around his body, cloaking him in feathers. He felt the wings touch his back. She bent forward, touching her beak to his nose. They stood in silence.
“That’s the only time she’s done that,” he said.
In the following years, Guidry became an expert on eagles. He takes Freedom to schools. Their bond amazes others.
“I’ve never seen a person with a bird of prey where the bird literally coos in the handler’s ear,” said Tom Murdoch, director of the Adopt-a-Stream Foundation. “…She does.”
Guidry became president of the Sarvey Wildlife Care Center. In 2008, a friend asked if she could send out an e-mail with pictures of Guidry and the eagle. He said sure, and typed up a note about their brushes with death.
His story went viral. He heard from people in Israel and South Africa. He stopped counting e-mails after he got 10,000, he said.
People poured out their hearts. Some sent quirky messages about pets. Others told heartbreaking stories about cancer. Some said Guidry offered hope. Some said he should write a book.
He started asking around and found an agent. He figured exposure could help with fundraising efforts. He ended up selling the story to HarperCollins.
He wrote at night, when he wasn’t at the wildlife center or working his other job, as a buyer for the Seattle guitar shop, American Music. It took him about eight months to finish.
“An Eagle Named Freedom” is due in stores on Tuesday, and Guidry feels as close as ever to the old bird.
He’s 55. She’s 12. They both could live for years.
Death will separate them one day, but only temporarily. Eagles carry on, Guidry believes.
“We all do, everybody’s spirit. So hopefully we’ll know each other in the next world.”
Andy Rathbun: 425-339-3455; arathbun@heraldnet.com
Book launch
Jeff Guidry’s book, “An Eagle Named Freedom,” about his time with Freedom, hits stores on Tuesday. The two will share their story at 11 a.m. May 15, during an Adopt-a-Stream event at McCollum Park, 600 128th Street SE, Everett. Tickets are $5 for members or $7 for non-members. Advance purchase is required.
More info: www.streamkeeper.org or 425-316-8592
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