The night before Christmas, half a dozen Brattleboro Memorial Hospital staff members crowded around a car parked in the hospital’s ambulance bay, racking their brains on how to release a barred owl stuck in the grill of their coworker’s car.
Todd Perry, a critical care floating nurse at the Brattleboro hospital and critical care paramedic for Rescue Inc. ambulance service, said he was driving to the hospital for the night shift on Dec. 24 when he saw an owl “swoop” in front of his car and he heard a loud thump.
Assuming the owl had died, he continued driving to work. But when he parked his car and locked it, he noticed the owl’s wing move.
“I called into the emergency department — and I have some friends in there — and said I have a critter I have to see what we can do something about,” Perry told VTDigger.
Using tools from the emergency department, Perry cut open the grill of his prized car, a 2020 Toyota 4Runner TRD Pro. Perry said the model is made only in Japan, with only about 1,000 made each year.
Perry said the damage to his car was “well worth it,” especially as the owl appeared to have no injuries once he removed it from the grill.
The owl stood perched on Perry’s gloved hand for a few seconds, watching the Brattleboro Memorial staff, and with one wiggle of Perry’s hand, it flew off.
“It was amazing just to have the animal alive in the first place but to get it out and have it not hurt was unbelievable,” Perry said.
The rescue mission took maybe 15 minutes, which was shorter than expected, said Lisa Ryan, a registered nurse in Brattleboro Memorial’s emergency department.
“It was freezing outside. You can hear everybody like screaming and cheering in the video because I think we were all relieved that we could just get inside,” Ryan said. “We were all screaming that it was a Christmas miracle.”
“(Perry) is just so hard-working. He is there for so many people in the community. And it was just kind of funny that he was there for the owl too,” Ryan said.