When Sharon Jacobs jumped out of a truck in silver heels on a dirt road near Spearfish, S.D., she thought she was rushing toward a dead hawk.
Instead, she found a live great horned owl tangled in a barbed-wire fence — and, as Cowboy State Daily reported, the Black Hills Raptor Center described the rescue as nearly miraculous.
Here's what to know
Sharon and Scott Jacobs, who own an art gallery and brewery in Deadwood, were driving to an employee meeting on Oct. 1 when Scott spotted the bird near the roadside.
Only at close range did Sharon realize the tangle ahead of her was a great horned owl. The bird turned and began clicking its beak — a sign of threat or distress — while Sharon tried to calm it.
"It's OK, buddy. I'm here to help you. We're here to help you," she said to the distressed owl, according to Cowboy State Daily.
Their next problem was equipment. Sharon had Scott look for gloves and for something to cover the owl's head, since that can help keep a raptor calm, but they had no gloves in the truck.
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A passerby filled the gap.
Brandon, a shift manager at Lucky's, stopped to help, had gloves with him, and, after permission was given to cut the fence, also produced wire cutters from his vehicle.
Because the owl was tightly wound in the wire, Scott and Brandon had to free it with care.
"It's almost as if he sensed we were there to help," Sharon recalled. At the veterinarian's office, the couple was shown a bloody length of barbed wire, roughly a foot long, that had been removed.
Even so, the owl did not appear to have any broken bones.
More background
The vet believed the owl either collided with the fence or became entangled in it first, then worsened the entanglement by struggling.
Beak-clicking is a defensive response sometimes seen when frightened wildlife is approached at close range.
Barbara Alexander explained that the bird's patagium — the membrane along the leading edge of the wing that is essential to flying — was not damaged. According to Alexander, that was the result Black Hills Raptor Center director Maggie Engler called miraculous, Cowboy State Daily reported.
The owl was being treated with pain medication and antibiotics, and Engler was cautiously hopeful it would recover.
The rescue also connected to a personal memory for Sharon — a great horned owl perched on her garage roof during a Black Hills storm and was killed by lightning.
A Lakota friend told her to bury the bird on the land because Lakota tradition views horned owls as feminine protectors.
What's being done?
The rescue moved from roadside help to professional care because several people acted quickly.
After freeing the owl, Sharon called her veterinarian, who met them at the clinic. She also contacted South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks, the Black Hills Raptor Center, and Reptile Gardens.
"Everybody's goal was to get this beautiful creature taken care of," she recalled.
Before the handoff, the people on scene did what they could to make transport safe: They used gloves against the owl's talons, slipped a large grocery bag over its head, and wrapped Brandon's sweatshirt around the bird after cutting it loose.
The Jacobses then carried the owl to the clinic in a small animal cage.
The aim is recovery followed by release. Sharon specifically asked whether the owl would be returned to the same territory because she didn't know if it had "mates or babies."
She was told that if its recovery stays on track, they will release the owl there.
"That owl died," she said of the owl that was killed on her roof. "I got to help save this one."
Where can I learn more?
Stories like this one show how quickly an owl rescue can become an all-hands effort. These articles follow owls pulled from other dangerous entanglements.
• Two sisters rescued a barn owl from barbed wire after stopping to help.
• An officer freed a barred owl tangled in barbed wire when it appeared to be dead.
• A woman pulled a barn owl from a water trough before it drowned.
• A sheriff's deputy stopped for an injured owl after a startling roadside sighting.
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