A Great Horned Owl will see its first Christmas thanks to an inquisitive and kind retired veterinarian.
Dr. Barry Heath, who has residences in Loreburn and Saskatoon, rescued the injured owl last month from the side of Highway 19 after finding it sitting about five feet off the shoulder of the road. Upon finding the owl Heath bundled it in his coat and drove it to the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Saskatoon for treatment.
“How many people get to run across an owl in that sort of a situation and then essentially think they may have saved its life,” said Heath, noting the bird is still recovering at the veterinary college. “I don’t know what kind of life it may have yet. It might be a captive owl the rest of its life. I don’t know.”
Heath said he found the owl while he was travelling a bit slower than normal, as is his usual routine, along the highway near Hawarden looking for red foxes and coyotes when he noticed an odd coloured lump on the ground that on closer inspection appeared to be a bird. He said when driving past the bird he noticed it to be an owl and since it unusually didn’t take flight he just assumed it must be injured, so he backed up his van and checked into it further.
“I walked around it, did a circle, and it followed me with its head as owls do, a 180-degree turn, and then it whipped back the other way and followed me all the way around and still didn’t try to walk away or move,” said Heath, noting it did extend its wings when he first got out of the van so he knew it didn’t have a broken wing. “Then I wondered about some kind of a head injury because it was close to the road and didn’t seem to be able to fly.”
There wasn’t any blood on the bird, so Heath said he then bent down to get a better look at the owl all the while speaking to it to try and soothe it. He said the owl still didn’t try and get away at this point and he knew if he left the bird where it was it would be attacked come nightfall by a fox or coyote, which normally patrol the shoulders of the road looking for mice or rabbits.
To read more please see the December 23 print edition of The Davidson Leader.