Annabell Whelan woke up on Tuesday to find her holiday guest terrified – Nowl the snowy owl, who she had rescued from the grill of a car the day before.
Whelan was out with her boyfriend’s family in Duluth, Minn., on Monday when she saw the owl “literally hanging there” after the car and bird collided, she told The Associated Press. The car’s owner had already called for help, but the animal rescue organization Bird needed was closed, so Whelan went in, not for the first time that day.
On Monday, Whelan found a great gray owl on the ground further north in Two Harbors, Minnesota. Experts from Wildwoods, a Duluth-based wildlife rehabilitation center, told him how to safely capture the bird.
“I definitely thought I had to fix the owls with the first one,” said Whelan, a 22-year-old Lake Superior Zoo guest experience manager who graduated earlier this year with degrees in biology and environmental science.
“I said he was having difficulty with one of his eyes,” she said. “I took my time and sat down with him and talked to him quietly and was trying to get him to trust me a little bit.”
Whelan scooped up the owl in a blanket, carried it to a kennel in the car and left the great gray owl in the Wildwoods. He was sent along with another animal to the University of Minnesota Raptor Center in St. in Paul
But the owl he found hours later was in a much scarier state, he said.
“Obviously, there was a lot more trauma,” he said.
With the Wildwoods closed for the night, Whelan wrapped Nowl in a blanket and spent the night in a dark, quiet room in his house, keeping him and his cousin’s strange cats and dogs away. He named it Nowl, a play on Noel.
“I tried to prepare myself to wake up in the morning and not go through the night,” Whelan said. But she said she cried happy tears when she saw Nowl moving and awake, taking her to the Wildwoods that morning.
Nowl is “pretty beat up,” Wildwoods posted on Facebook Tuesday after examining the bird. “We applied a wing cover, administered medication and coordinated with the Raptor Center to get him to them.”
The rescue said people should slow down, stay alert and call for help when they see an injured animal. The animals are scared of people and must be quickly taken to a quiet and safe place where they can be left alone until the professionals come in, the rescue said.
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Fingerhut reported from Des Moines, Iowa.
