BLOOMINGTON - The saga of the eagle egg at Miller Park Zoo had a sad ending Monday when an examination showed it was infertile all along. | Gallery: Cracking the egg | Past stories

Only a yellow yolk and brownish fluid spilled out after zoo director John Tobias placed the egg inside two gallon-sized plastic bags and cracked it with the edge of his cane. Tobias wanted to know if the egg ever was fertile or if a chick died during development. Eaglets sometimes are unable to escape the shell.

"The question has been answered. No baby," said zoo volunteer Sandy Simpson, who witnessed the procedure after Tobias and zookeeper Erik Heinonen entered the enclosure and retrieved the egg. The eagles were perched on logs above the nest they built on the ground. Beauty called and called. The sound seemed to have a mournful tone.

The zoo's adult female eagle, Beauty, and her companion, a male eagle named Mathata, abandoned the egg over the weekend after caring for it for nearly two months.

The egg was one of two which Beauty laid. The other disappeared in mid-May, the apparent victim of a maruding wild animal or a human thief or Beauty herself. Eagles will sometimes eat their own eggs if they sense they are not developing, said eagle expert Given Harper, who heads Illinois Wesleyan University's biology department.

Tobias and Heinonen found no sign of the second egg when they searched the nest and surrounding area on Monday.

The eggs were the first ones Beauty laid in her 13 years at the zoo and appeared four days apart during a visit from a wild eagle that spent a portion of each day perched above the open enclosure. Beauty and Mathata cannot fly due to the injuries which landed them in captivity.

The drama gripped Central Illinois as it played out over 56 days. The city of Bloomington installed a live-feed video camera where viewers could watch as Beauty and Mathata shared egg-tending duties. The camera was accessible on the city of Bloomington's Web site, which received about a quarter of a million hits. Linked to Pantagraph.com, the eagle cam received more than 1 million more visits.

The camera was removed from the enclosure Monday afternoon.

"It's been a good run," said Tobias. "It would have been exciting if they had been successful. But, it's exciting without it, too."

"A lot of people came to the zoo to see it," said Jeff Simpson, Sandy's husband, a falconer and zoo volunteer. He built the nesting box for peregrines installed at the top of Illinois State University's Watterson Towers to await a mating pair. "Next year…"

"It was sure fun," added Heinonen. "It's good to see people excited about wildlife. It's our job."

After caring for the eagles since the first egg was laid and dealing with soaring attendance at the facility, the zoo staff took the disappointment in stride, Tobias said.

Most had given up hope an eaglet would hatch on June 8 after Tobias and Heinonen performed a brief procedure called "candling," when light is beamed through the shell to see if anything is developing inside. At that time, the egg's contents were too dense for anything to be seen.

The zoo's federal permit allows the facility to exhibit eagles, not to raise them, but the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service gave special permission for the zoo to see the drama through to the end. If an eaglet had hatched, plans called for it to spend the first 10 weeks of its life at the zoo, then turned over to a professional handler who would have weaned it for release in the wild.

Tobias has said the federal officials were adamant the situation should not be repeated. But Beauty may or may not lay eggs in the future, and Tobias said he does not plan to separate the pair or take other action to intervene.

"I'm not going to do a thing," Tobias said.

Then, he reconsidered:

"I'll have a stern talk with them," he said.