Would you like to hold my eagle?

First, let me say that this should be a picture of me holding the eagle, but I didn't find out until too late that I could have paid 200 tenge (maybe $1.25) to hold this eagle. This is our tour guide Karla who knows everyone in Kazakhstan, and the guy let her do it for free.

Eagles can weigh anywhere from 10 to 20 pounds, and there is a special apparatus that young kids and horsemen use to get extra support when holding an eagle. The thick, leather glove is a must for dealing with the razor-sharp talons.

After our trip to the canyon, we stopped at a museum of eagle hunting and learned that Kazakh hunters use eagles to take down rabbits, foxes, and even wolves. On the wall of the museum was a wolf skin that looked about 7 feet long -- the owner said it was the biggest wolf they had seen an eagle take down. Eagle hunting season doesn't start for a couple more weeks, but it would be pretty cool to see a demo of hunting with eagles.