Idaho State Police trooper, wildlife rehabilitator save owl along busy freeway

It wasn’t just the typical traffic that slowed down a busy freeway Tuesday in Nampa.

A great horned owl was spotted on the pavement of Interstate 84. Its talons tied up in plastic, there wasn’t much it could do to escape. And then a motorist called police.

Idaho State Police Sgt. Brandalyn Crapo arrived, looking for the bundle of feathers, eyes, claws and plastic. Some time had gone by since the call had come in.

After locating the owl, Crapo stopped her car on the shoulder to protect the bird of prey from being run over as she waited.

“This one took some careful searching on a busy freeway,” ISP Col. Kedrick Wills said in a tweet.

Crapo called for more help, this time from James McKinley — a retired 50-year wildlife researcher, and now wildlife rehabilitator. He works independently from organizations like the Animals in Distress Association and the Ruth Melichar Bird Center, but they often go to him for help with birds of prey.

The owl still had its wings free, which could have spelled trouble during the rush hour traffic.

“It is so dicey when you go to grab the bird,” McKinley said. “Sometimes it doesn’t want to get grabbed, and that can get ugly, which was my main concern.”

His focus for his career has been working with raptors. He holds government permits that allow him to house and rehabilitate state and federally protected birds. He does this as a volunteer.

McKinley spends his retirement days driving around town on calls, or tending to the birds of prey in his care. He has worked about 600 cases already this year, and not all of them go as well as it did with this owl.

Working along the inner shoulder of the interstate, there wasn’t much room for error, with a stream of cars, trucks and tractor-trailers passing by.

Many raptors are nocturnal animals, McKinley said, and “they hunt the roadways at night.” He suspects the bird saw the plastic bag as prey.

“The animal used its foot and clenched it, and that’s how it got hung up,” McKinley said. “I’m speculating he thought the movement of the bag was a prey at night. It might have been attracted to the movement.”

But McKinley was able to get the owl separated from the bag, and after some photo ops with Crapo, the bird was set free — away from the busy interstate.

This story was originally published October 6, 2021 at 4:00 AM.