Raptor Rehab

The car accident left him blind and with a broken leg. He stood on the side of the road as the lights of a second car pulled up. He was in a state of shock. He moved very little and made no noise. Two college-aged kids stood over the victim. Neither knew what to do.

Doug Noltie, a professor of Fisheries and Wildlife at MU, was on his way home from a friend’s house with his wife when he came upon the scene. The victim stood stunned. Noltie stepped from his car and stood over the injured creature.

Without causing further harm, Noltie was able to bring the victim into his car. The stunned barred owl did not scratch and he did not bite. Noltie drove home.

After spending the night in a box on Noltie’s counter, the barred owl, who would later be named Erol, was brought to MU’s Raptor Rehabilitation Compound, where he began his long rehabilitation.

Erol, along with three other raptors, will be released back into the wild Tuesday as part of the Raptor Rehabilitation Project’s public release. Tours of the rehabilitation compound start at 5 p.m., and the release will take place at 6 p.m. Public release of a raptor is a rarity for the project, which tends to just let the birds out the door once they are ready to go.

“What we usually do is just open up the door and put a few mice either inside the door or right outside of the door, so the birds can just leave as they please and come back for food if they need to,” said Erin West, president of the rehabilitation project.

The recovery period of the birds has a large range, some staying for several days and some for many months.

The recovery of an injured raptor begins when community members find injured raptors and bring the birds into the compound or alert the project of the bird’s whereabouts.

“The main thing is, if you find an injured raptor, call us,” West said.

Raptors, which many people know as birds of prey, are generally not too hard to bring in.

Noltie remembers his experience with the raptor fondly.

“I got a chance to see a fairly impressive bird up close,” he said, adding, “(It) was cool for my daughters to see an owl up close when they came downstairs in the morning.”

After the birds are brought to the compound, they are taken to a special hospital room with cages along two of the walls. Here they are diagnosed and the decision is made on what will be done. When Erol came in, the decision wasn’t as easy as some.

“He was totally blind and had a broken leg and they weren’t going to take the time to do the surgery, and put all the money and effort into wondering if his eyes would heal,” said Kathryn Kettenbach, the project’s vice president.

The next step is treating the birds. Sometimes this requires surgery and sometimes it just requires a little rest. With Erol it was rest, drug therapy and hope.

“He was on drug therapy for three weeks straight, and his retinas are both about two-thirds reattached,” Kettenbach said.

After three weeks of being cooped up in a hospital, Erol was in need of some strength training, which brought him to the next step of the process, the flight cages down the hill from the veterinary hospital.

“We have a couple of big flight cages where they can go to build up their muscles after they have atrophied,” West said, “This is also where they’ll be tested to see if they can hunt again.”

Birds with extended stays in the hospital make it into these cages where they are able to fly around. They also test to see if they are able to hit perches, West said.

After a while, the birds are exercised by being taken to a couple of perches outside where they can fly back and forth, a process called “creancing.”

“Once they’re flying really well and landing on perches really well, then we’ll live-test them,” West said.

Live-testing involves putting mice or rats into something the size of a wading pool and seeing if the birds can find them, and hunt them successfully. A bird must be able to hunt before it can be released into the wild.

“We feel it would be unethical to release them if we didn’t know that they could hunt, because we don’t want to set them up to starve,” West said.

Once a bird can hunt, it is released from the compound. And on Tuesday, Erol will reach that last step.

Other birds set to be released are a red-tailed hawk named London, and two other barred owls named Willow and Chipper.

The public is welcome to the release and will also be given the opportunity to learn more about how to help the project by giving donations, adopting a raptor or volunteering time.

“The release of the four birds will be a rare opportunity to see something that (the public) generally can’t see,” West said.

West and Kettenbach said they hope a lot of people will show up.

“We’re intending on going to the release,” said Noltie, whose daughters helped pick Erol’s name, inspired by the name of a literary owl from a certain popular series of books. “They’re really into Harry Potter at our house, so they chose a Harry Potter name.”