Twelve-year-old Sam Moody has lost her left eye after an Australian magpie attacked her in Western Australia while she walked home from school.
The incident occurred in November of last year as the wild bird swooped down and drove its beak into her eye while she was looking at her mobile phone.
Following the sudden attack, the schoolgirl called her mother, Nicole, before seeking urgent help from teachers at her school.
Nicole arrived at the scene shortly afterward and discovered her injured daughter waiting in a sports equipment room alongside a basketball coach.
When Sam removed her hands from her face, Nicole said everyone present gasped in shock. She described seeing mutilated fragments of internal eye tissue hanging beside her daughter's eyelid as fluid and blood leaked from the wound, describing the sight as nauseating.
Emergency medical staff admitted Sam to a hospital, where surgeons performed a six-hour operation to stitch together the severely damaged structures of her left eye.
Two days after the surgery, the eye lens became inflamed and had to be surgically removed. Doctors informed the family that vision in Sam's left eye will likely never recover.
In cases of severe ocular trauma, traumatic inflammation can rapidly damage delicate internal eye components. Surgical removal of an inflamed natural lens is often necessary to prevent secondary complications, though severe injuries frequently cause permanent sight loss.
Resident warnings and magpie behavior
Local residents reported that the same magpie had been terrorizing pedestrians in the neighborhood for a long time while aggressively defending its nest.
Australian magpies are black-and-white songbirds native to Australia and southern New Guinea. During their annual spring breeding season, male magpies frequently exhibit swooping behavior, diving at pedestrians and cyclists who pass near their nests to protect their young.
Western Australia is Australia's largest state by land area, where suburban neighborhoods often border natural bushland, bringing residents into frequent contact with territorial wildlife during nesting months.
Sam is now recovering at home, but the trauma of the attack has left her with an intense fear of going outside. She continuously shields her face with her hand whenever she leaves the house.
The injury forced the young student to abandon her aerial acrobatics training and transition from regular classroom attendance to home schooling. Aerial acrobatics is a physical gymnastics discipline involving apparatuses such as silks and hoops, requiring precise depth perception and two-eyed spatial vision.
Similar bird attacks reported
The attack is not the only recent incident involving aggressive wild birds. In Alameda, California, 83-year-old Mary Jo Kelly was attacked by wild birds in a separate incident that left her requiring six stitches on her right hand.
Alameda is an island city located in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, where urban parks and coastal shorelines provide habitats for various native bird species.
