While many people were opening presents on Christmas morning, Amanda Isett, a wildlife conservation officer with the Pennsylvania Game Commission, got a telephone call summoning her to a state prison where a snowy owl was trapped in razor wire at the perimeter fence.
“We rescue injured wildlife, including owls, all the time, but this is my first snowy owl. I call it my snowy Christmas. It was the best Christmas gift I ever got in my life,” said Ms. Isett, who lives in Mifflin County and works out of the PGC office there.
Game Commission offices were closed for Christmas, but she got the call from a friend who works at State Correctional Institution - Smithfield in Huntingdon.
Officer Isett rescued the bird, which had some blood on its wing, and contacted Robyn Graboski, a state-licensed wildlife rehabilitator who operates Centre Wildlife Care in Port Matilda, near Penn State.
The owl’s wing is not broken, but there are “some minor skin tears on the wing and some feathers are missing,” Ms. Graboski said. The owl is expected to make a full recovery and will be released when the feathers grow back.
“He could fly a little bit now, but he needs the feathers to fly back to the Arctic Tundra, which is where snowy owls live,” Ms. Graboski said.
The owl is mostly white; black feathers on its chest and wings indicate it is “a juvenile male,” probably born within the last year, she said. He weighs 2.86 pounds.
Snowy owls are one of the largest owls, and adults weigh 4.6 pounds with a 60-inch wingspan, according to the National Aviary website.
Officer Isett was happy to explain how she rescued the young owl.
“When you go to a prison, you have to leave your weapons behind,” she said. “I entered with a crate, a net, and an Army blanket, walking past people who were making Christmas visits” with inmates.
The snowy owl was not tangled up in the razor wire, but was stuck in a small area of the wall, surrounded by the wire.
“I was afraid it would get into the wire if it tried to avoid me. But it flew toward me,” and Ms. Isett said she got it into the crate without harm to the bird or herself.
Ms. Graboski has been tube-feeding him liquids laced with antibiotics. She expects to feed him dead rodents starting Wednesday night.
Snowy owls are occasionally seen in Pennsylvania and other states when their Arctic food supplies — mostly lemmings — run low, according to Ms. Graboski and the National Aviary web site.
This is the fourth snowy owl that has come into the Centre Wildlife Care center.
More photos of the snowy owl can be seen on the Facebook pages of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections and Centre Wildlife Care.
Linda Wilson Fuoco: lfuoco@post-gazette.com or 412-263-3064.
First Published: December 27, 2017, 6:10 p.m.
Updated: December 27, 2017, 6:10 p.m.
