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LEHI — When a baby owl needed to be rescued, the perfect police officer for the situation was ready to respond.
Self-described “bird nerd” Zach Fossum, an officer for the Lehi Police Department, was on patrol when he was called to respond to an animal problem at Fox Hollow Elementary School at about 7:40 a.m. Tuesday morning. When he learned that a young great horned owl was caught in a soccer net, the master class falconer knew he could help.
“It’s always exciting to help with these because I feel so comfortable grabbing them,” he said. “If a call like this comes out it’s really exciting for me to go respond because I feel like I can handle it.”
When Fossum arrived, the owl was badly tangled in the net. Several school employees were doing their best to help by cutting the net with scissors.
“They had got the majority of the net kind of cut out in a circle around the owl, but the owl was still covered with netting,” Fossum said. “So I grabbed the owl and helped pull ... off the remainder of the netting.”
The rescue turned into an educational opportunity for the teachers who helped out and students at the school. Fossum, who has been a falconer in Utah for 12 years, was able to show them the bird and share his knowledge of owls.
After calling the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources to consult, the baby owl went home with Fossum. He said he just happened to have an empty chamber space that meets federal standards for housing raptors.
The young owl will likely stay under Fossum’s care for a week to 10 days, just until the bird’s feather growth is complete. He said the owl’s feather growth is at around 60 or 70 percent, meaning it wasn’t in any condition to be flying around full-time. He suspected that is why the bird ended up in the soccer net.
“When the birds kind of start fledging from the nest, they get a little clumsy sometimes,” he said. “I don’t know if it landed in the field and tried to take off again or went right into the net ... but it was certainly tangled in there pretty bad.”
Once the owl’s feathers come in, it will be released.
Contributing: Brianna Bodily
