Raptor rapture: Stolen eagle returned to its perch at North Point Douglas cultural centre

A stolen wooden eagle has landed back where it belongs after being lifted from its perch at a North Point Douglas cultural centre.

Over the lunch hour on Friday, two men walked into the Manitoba Indigenous Cultural Education Centre on SutherlandAvenue and deposited the57-kilogrameagle carving that had been stolen from the property a week earlier.

"It walked in the door at 12:30," said Dennis Daniels, the centre's executive director, adding the men who carried the carving in were not too chatty: "They said they found it in the North End in a back alley."

• Large eagle statue stolen from Indigenous cultural centre

The statue was part of a set of seven carvings representing Anishinaabe clans, affixed to poles at the corner of Sutherland and Euclid Avenue.

The thieves who removed it covered a security camera with a coffee cup. Daniels says he is not sure whether the men who returned it were the same people.

"Once it was on social media and CBC, it didn't take long," he said. "I'm really happy, but I just bought another one to replace it. And I just paid for it."

The centre now has an eagle statue for sale, Daniels says.