In the internet age, home recordings can unexpectedly become global sensations, often termed as “going viral.” This week, a notable example features a humorous clip from Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands, showing house cats and other neighborhood animals gathering on a porch. When Pam Aus heard a bald eagle squawking outside her house last week, she quickly grabbed her video camera to capture its behavior.
She says, “Okay, I keep hearing these calls for me,” in the video that can be found on YouTube. “I open my door and, oh, Mr. Eagle keeps calling me.”
On her porch, besides Mr. Eagle, a fox and Aus’s two house cats, Gizmo and Suitcase, soon gathered together. Aus filmed for about a minute before uploading the video to her YouTube channel, a practice she’s maintained since its inception four years ago.
Eagles and foxes are common in Alaska, but it’s rare to see them together, let alone near a house’s entrance with other animals.
The woman stood just a meter away from a bald eagle, with a wild fox below, both calmly attentive to her. Nearby, her sociable cat Gizmo sat unperturbed. As she aimed the camera at Suitcase, her other cat approaching through the snow to enter the house, the fox showed interest in joining them indoors.