There it was in a full, glorious black-and-white photo: a man standing on a straight-backed wooden chair, holding the wingtips of a bald eagle with its body hanging below, just off the ground. Have you ever seen a picture like that? I have, and the man in the photo was my Grandpa! In the United States, it would be considered illegal, a blasphemy against the symbolic national bird of the country. To others, it would seem inhumane to glory in the death of such a majestic creature, holding it up, as it were, like a trophy.

Bald eagles are beautiful birds, but they aren’t actually bald; according to one source, the name derives from an older meaning of the word, “white-headed.” Bald eagles have very distinctive white heads. They range through most of Canada, Alaska, and the continental US, and even into Mexico. Being one of the largest North American birds, they can have a wingspan of up to eight feet and weigh up to thirteen pounds. Once my wife and I, on a short canoe trip, witnessed one swoop down out of nowhere, gliding along just above the lake’s surface, and then suddenly dropping to the water, snatching up a fish in its talons and taking off into the sky. It was one of the most beautiful, picturesque sights you can imagine.

The scene ranks right up there with an experience my wife and I had leading a wilderness trip of young adults into the interior of Algonquin Provincial Park in Canada. We saw thirteen moose in the span of two days. Two of those were a moose cow and its calf munching on water lilies as we quietly paddled up. We went in for a closer look, to about thirty feet away, until we came to our senses and realized the momma moose was in knee-high water and could probably take a run at us easily, to protect her young ‘un. So we quickly paddled away.

Another time we were camping beside a stream bed, and a bull moose came sauntering down toward us. We froze in place—this was a big one! Moose can grow to seven feet tall at the shoulder and weigh up to fifteen hundred pounds (equivalent to ten one-hundred-fifty-pound human beings). Moose antlers can grow to about eighty inches wide; that’s about six and a half feet across. We didn’t take time to measure the moose coming at us; it showed no sign of turning and was on course to run us over. I remembered an old trick from my grandmother: On the count of three, everyone yell! We did, and the moose looked up as if just now noticing us and then casually trotted off into the woods. No big deal to him. Big deal to us. Whew!

Back to Grandpa’s eagle, these birds build the largest nests of any North American birds, up to eight feet wide and thirteen feet deep (yes, you read that right!), and can weigh a metric ton (research reveals varying maximum sizes). Adult eagles have no natural predators, apart from human poachers. Suffice it to say, these are big birds, and one would not want to fight one.

So what was my Grandpa doing, posing with a dead eagle, the federally protected, proud national bird of the United States? He explained it as a straightforward thing. One evening Gramps walked out of his northern Minnesota farmhouse to discover the eagle wounded in the front yard. The cause of the injury was unknown, but it clearly could not fly. Though he was an avid hunter, he respected his country and its symbols. He also had a respect for nature. Leaving a poor, wounded animal in its pain and subject to a torturous death at the hands (er, paws and jaws) of the ever-present opportunistic animals was just not part of his DNA. Finding a club, he put the bird out of its misery. Before the days of bird sanctuaries, there were no other alternatives. Thus, the club; hence, the photo.

My grandfather was not a poacher, one who illegally hunted protected species, and this incident goes to show there is always more to the story than at first look. If someone comes at you with a knife, it could be a doctor tasked with removing a cancerous tumor. When things look bad in our lives, God may be doing something that is not recognizable now but will become apparent down the road. Just as a photo only captures a single point in time, our present experience is just a moment in time, a snapshot. God is writing a story in each of our lives, and the last chapter has not been written yet.