Sharon and Scott Jacobs were driving near Spearfish, South Dakota, on Thursday when Scott spotted something along the side of the road.
“We were just driving and he gives me a pouty face,” Sharon said.
“I think that was a hawk stuck on the barbed wire,” he told her.
He kept driving.
“He said, ‘I don’t think it’s alive,’” Sharon recalled.
She gave her husband an incongruous look.
“Excuse me, do you forget who your wife is?” she recalled thinking.
Sharon is an animal whisperer of sorts: She has rescued horses, cats and dogs.
She asked Scott to back up.
Out the truck window she saw what looked like a pile of barbed wire along the fenceline.
Sharon had chosen to wear silver heels on Thursday – her “Michael Jackson shoes,” as she called them.
Little did she know she would be running down a dirt road in them toward a majestic bird – that might or might not be dead.
It wasn’t until she was feet away that she realized it was a great horned owl tangled in the barbed wire.
‘It’s An Owl’
The Jacobses, who own an art gallery and brewery in Deadwood, were on their way to the gallery for an employee meeting when they stopped.
The bird was hanging from the fence, its feathers blowing in the wind.
At first, Sharon said it apparently didn’t hear her approaching.
She yelled back to her husband, “It’s an owl!”
Then she turned around.
The owl was staring directly at her.
It began clicking its beak. That’s how horned owls signal a threat, express distress or warn away predators.
“It’s OK, buddy,” Sharon told it. “I’m here to help you. We’re here to help you.”
Sharon owns horses, including a rescue, and instinctively began talking to the owl the way she would calm a frightened horse.
She shushed it softly and repeatedly.
She told Scott to find gloves and something they could use to cover the owl’s head. They had large grocery bags in the vehicle, and Sharon knew covering the bird’s head could help keep it calm.
They had the bag.
What they didn’t have was gloves.
Then another car pulled up.
Everybody Stopped To Help
The driver, Brandon, a shift manager at Lucky’s, stopped to see what was going on.
Scott asked if he had gloves.
He did.
Scott and Brandon approached the fence and tried to free the owl, but it was badly entangled. They slipped the bag over its head and partly over a wing.
The owl barely fought them, Sharon said.
“It’s almost as if he sensed we were there to help,” she said.
Then another vehicle approached.
It was the property owner.
Sharon ran back toward the road and explained that an owl was caught in the fence. They needed to cut the wire to get it loose.
Was that OK?
The young woman called her father.
Of course, he told them. Cut it.
Then came another stroke of luck.
Brandon had wire cutters in his vehicle.
“What are the chances?” Sharon said.
Scott pulled on the gloves, and the two men went to work. Scott held one of the owl’s legs and managed to pry one foot free from the wire.
Once that foot was free, the owl placed its other foot on Scott’s gloved hand.
Brandon took off his sweatshirt and used it to cover the bird. Scott gathered the owl against himself, holding its feet securely with one hand and wrapping his other arm around its body.
They had him.
Now they had to figure out how badly he was hurt – and who could help.
A Familiar Cage
Sharon had already called her veterinarian, who agreed to meet them at his office.
The Jacobses placed the owl into a small animal cage for the drive, the same cage in which Sharon had once transported her cat to the vet after it had been bitten by a rattlesnake.
At the clinic, the veterinarian uncovered the bird and expertly took hold of it.
“I’m going to check him,” he told them. “You wait here.”
They did.
About five minutes later, veterinary staff invited them into the room where the owl was.
The veterinarian walked in holding roughly a foot-long piece of barbed wire.
There was blood on two of the barbs.
Somehow, nothing on the owl appeared to be broken.
The veterinarian believed the owl had struck or become caught on the fence, then flailed and twisted as it tried desperately to escape, winding itself farther into the wire, Sharon said.
She said she had seen some of that struggle when she approached the bird. She remembered watching it turn its head and bite at its own wing, trying to free itself.
“It was a bittersweet thing,” she said.
There sat the beautiful wild bird in the same cage over which Sharon had once waited and worried about her rattlesnake-bitten cat.
But the owl was alive.
‘Everybody’s Goal’
Sharon began making phone calls.
She contacted South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks. She called the Black Hills Raptor Center. She even called Reptile Gardens.
“Everybody’s goal was to get this beautiful creature taken care of,” she said.
The owl eventually came under the care of the Black Hills Raptor Center, where the extent of its good fortune became even clearer.
Barbara Alexander, a transporter with the center, told Cowboy State Daily on Friday that the owl remarkably avoided tearing its patagium, the flexible membrane along the leading edge of a bird’s wing that is critical to flight.
The director of the center, Maggie Engler, said it was short of a miracle, according to Alexander.
The owl was receiving pain medication and antibiotics. Engler was guardedly optimistic it would heal, Alexander said.
If all goes well, the owl will eventually be released back to nature.
Sharon said she asked if the owl would be released in its familiar territory.
“I don’t know if there’s mates or babies,” she said.
She learned that it will.
“I have every intention of being there,” Sharon said. “And I know I’ll cry.”
The Owl She Couldn't Save
For Sharon, there is another reason this particular rescue carries weight.
Great horned owls already held a special place in her heart.
Seven years ago, during a fierce Black Hills storm, a great horned owl perched on the peak of her garage roof was struck by lightning.
The bolt went through the bird’s chest and out its back.
Contractors eventually brought the dead owl down from the roof.
Sharon said she would take care of it.
She called a Lakota friend for guidance. Her friend told her to bury the owl on the land and not tell anyone where she had buried it.
In Lakota tradition, her friend explained, horned owls are regarded as feminine protectors.
Later, she learned had the owl not been on the roof the lightning likely would have struck the garage and destroyed anything inside.
Sharon buried that owl, and to this day she is the only one who knows where it is.
For seven years, she carried the memory of the owl she couldn't help.
“That owl died,” she said. “I got to help save this one.”
Kate Meadows can be reached at kate@cowboystatedaily.com.
