The Fourth of July has come and gone, but its reverberations are still being felt. And there’s perhaps no greater resounding thud than the following story, which comes to us from Minnesota and features three of the most patriotic players you can imagine. Put them all together oh … OH MY.

It reads like something John Phillip Sousa would put music to.

Get this …

A bald eagle. A United States Army veteran. And a .22 rifle.

Jason Galvin, the vet, borrowed the gun to bust apart a rope that had been keeping the national emblem hostage. It took about 150 shots through blustery gusts (a target merely inches wide) but the cloth chain was broken, and the eagle wasn’t harmed at all.

When the bird was finally able to spread its wing and get out of its predicament, the crowd that had gathered to watch the former serviceman do his thing dubbed it “Freedom” — because why not?

This from The Verge:

The raptor survived the fall, and staff at a local raptor center said it was eating and drinking the day after its ordeal ended. It’s not clear how it originally got caught in the rope, but locals had spotted the majestic creature dangling upside down from the tree, 75 feet in the air, days before. Jackie Gervais Galvin called police and firefighters, but because the bird was so high, both agencies were unable to help and “deemed this was going to be a loss.” Not if Jason — a “very patriotic” Afghanistan vet — had anything to say about it. “Fourth of July, you know,” Jason told local KARE News. “That’s our bird. We can’t let it sit there.”

Jason didn’t. He saw others chalking a living thing to be a “loss” and turned into it a win. A HUGE win.