I first saw this as a tweet on twitter and wanted to share it further. It’s a story of a local community in South Riding that helped get a young Great Horned Owl to a wildlife rehabber. Here’s the Great Horned Owl blog post by Gateway to Loudoun and Dulles South.
This story is an example of how when we see injured wildlife, we can (and should) do something to help. Typically when you call a wildlife rehab organizations, they’ll have an answering machine where you leave a message and volunteers call you back and walk you through next steps. They also typically need you to secure the animal (in a box or some sort of transportation carrier), and you’ll most often need to drive the animal to the wildlife rehabber (they’re busy caring for lots of animals and don’t have time to drive around).
I’ve gone through this routine numerous times – with an opossum hit by the side of the road (photo above), rabbits, turtles, squirrels, a grackle, a hawk and yes, even a fawn. Being a part of this process of helping to get the animal to the rehabber is so important – sometimes, it’s to put the animal out of a painful slow death if the injuries are that bad, other times it’s to save it’s life. Both situations are so important and worthy of us as good samaritans to act.
One key thing to keep in mind is that it’s important not to stress out the animal further by having large crowds around it – simply secure the animal and keep it in a warm dark place until you can get it into the caring hands of a rehabber.