Great horned owl survives collision with SUV near Camrose

A Fish and Wildlife officer is being applauded for his work in being able to rescue a Great horned owl from the front grill of an SUV near Camrose.

The truck belonged to an employee at a local high school, who had at first thought the bird was dead and caught in the front end of the truck; she returned a few hours later to find it staring back at her.

Fish and Wildlife Officer Lorne Rinkel said the truck must have been travelling around 100 kilometres an hour and this is a definite first in his long career.

It happened in the early morning hours of Dec. 13, when the call came into a “Report a Poacher” line.

“Thinking this owl was dead, she left it and returned to her vehicle around lunch time and was going to have a look at the damage and do what needed to be done and was greeted by a quite live owl looking out of the grill,” said Rinkel. “I did attend and noticed a great horned owl peering out from the inside of the vehicle’s front grill. The students with the high school automotive or shop class had rolled the vehicle into their work bay, so I was able to deal with it inside the school.”

Rinkel said the owner had given the shop teacher permission to cut away parts of her grill to make his job easier. They made a few cuts and created an opening.

“I was able to reach in with some heavy leather welders’ gloves and compress the owl’s wings against its body to prevent it from flapping and causing further injury and simply lifted the owl out of the vehicle.”

He checked it over and noticed its wings and legs were fine, which was quite amazing considering the severity of the impact.

“It had a small amount of blood on one of its legs, but the legs and wings were fine. There were a lot of happy students taking videos and pictures, almost cheering, you might say.”

He placed it in a box for nearly 10 hours in hopes of giving it some time to warm up from the bitter cold.

Rinkel later took it to a rural area and opened up the lid. It hopped out and flew into the full moon.

“It was almost like a fairy tale, it’s quite amazing that it survived the impact. I suspect it was minus 30, minus 35 that morning and the fact that the grill was quite fragile, it broke quite easily.

“I’ve seen, unfortunately, lots of dead birds of prey in front grill, but I’ve never seen one survive.

“A five or a six pound owl being hit by a 3000 pound vehicle, it seems improbable, but nevertheless it was fine. Had it sustained more injuries we would have given it to a Wildlife Centre but there wasn’t anything.”