May 9, 2018 | 1:16pm
This owl didn’t give a hoot that
this lady was just trying to help.
A woman who spotted a disoriented
great horned owl late Monday thought she was doing a good deed when she put the
bird in her car and drove away for help – until it came to and attacked her behind
the wheel and held her hostage.
“This owl, dazed when a motorist
got it off Oracle Road last night, revived inside her car,” officials with the
Arizona Game & Fish Department in Tucson said in a
tweet. “It then latched onto her sleeve and steering wheel for some
time.”
Mark Hart, a spokesman for the
wildlife agency, told the Arizona Republic that the
unidentified woman intended to “render aid” to the animal after it was
apparently struck by a car. The woman’s mother contacted the agency after she became
trapped inside her vehicle.
A department official then told
the woman to pour water on the owl in an attempt to jar it loose, but instead
the animal drank the water and kept its talons dug into the woman’s sleeve and
her car’s steering wheel.
“She’s fortunate she wasn’t
hurt,” Hart told the newspaper. “We have instances ranging from people trying
to aide a coyote hit by a car and down on the street only to be bitten, to
people separating young wildlife from their mothers in the mistaken notion that
a mother has abandoned the small animal.”
The owl ultimately released its
grip and hopped out of the car, Hart said. The animal appeared to be OK and was
later spotted by the woman’s mother in the same area on Tuesday.
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