I found the stick and leaves, but no snake on the ground..

Presumably it is even worse. Bald eagles usually don't swim like ducks on the water, they only prey on the water. That is, mr. octopus is probalby thinking:; "damn, why was this fricking featherball trying to kill me? I'll fight for my life, and maybe i can drown this wet air creature to save myself. Yeah! soon he will be dommed and maybe i can eat this perfidious sucker myself!!" (followed by your boat jerks thought) .....Even though i really appreciate the majestic soaring eagle, i would have preferred to give evolution a chance and let the cephalopod feast on the leucocephalus...

Basically evolution is mutation (or change) combined with selection not more and not less. Wherever these two aspects apply you can observe evoluion at work. It seems there is some kind of misunderstanding with evolution. Evolution is a very effective killer and it is not there to save you or anyone or anything else form extinction. Evolution is above all the terminal "extinctor". Compare evolution with a kind of unfair race with slow and rapid changes of the rules and the track. On the other hand, all participants are subjected from to arbitrary small-step changes they even can't control. Note: Evolution is a killer, and therefore much more species have been erased fron the planet than are present right now. And it will continue killing. And if you take an open minded look at the world, you can see the principles of evolution working everywhere. So assume that evolution is true and believe me we are not the only one with special abilities, but whe where the first and where the ones that very successfully drive the second and third places towards extinvtion...