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The meal was apparently too heavy. The eagle failed to clear transmission lines as it flew from the landfill toward the Lemon Creek Operation Center, she said. When a repair crew arrived, they found the eagle carcass with the deer head nearby.

The outage started about 9:45 a.m. and affected customers in Salmon Creek, Lemon Creek, the Mendenhall Valley and Out the Road, Wood said. It was completely fixed by 10:28 a.m.

"It was a speedy recovery because a crew was already mobilized, and because a customer managed to hear the explosion," Wood said. "So we were able to narrow it in pretty quickly."

The landfill has a program in place to discourage eagles, ravens and other birds from feeding, she said. But this eagle "got a hold of a little bit more than he could handle."

"This would have been a major score," Wood said. "That eagle would have been the king eagle of the Lemon Creek group."

• Ken Lewis can be reached at ken.lewis@juneauempire.com.