From World Bird Sanctuary
Mistakes were made. Barred Owl 23-742 suffered an unusual accident while hunting, getting both legs wedged into a tree crook. Thankfully, a passerby noticed the poor owl's plight as she hung upside down in the tree and called our hospital for help. Our rescuers successfully removed the owl from the tree and brought her in for care.
While 23-742 escaped without any fractures, she has significant constriction wounds to both her legs. With how tightly her legs were wedged, circulation would have been cut off to the area and to her feet for an unknown amount of time. With injuries like this, it can take several days before the full extent of the damage can be determined, so it is too early to tell if she will survive her accident.
So far, 23-742 is using both of her feet reasonably well and is resting comfortably with medications for both pain and to help improve circulation to the area. Her wounds are bandaged, and she will receive daily cleaning and dressing changes to monitor the condition of the tissue.
Hopefully she will make a full recovery and be able to be released back into the wild. There are some owls at my local nature center that are now permanent residents due to their injuries not healing properly to survive without human intervention. The center calls the owls (and other such animals) their “wildlife ambassadors” and show them in informational talks/ educational field trips.
I've seen year to year stats from a few of the rescues I follow and they are typically not great. You figure most of these animals that get brought in are on the small side and they either had a run in with a car, a building, or a bigger animal. A 30% survival rate seems to be the norm.
Most of them don't seem to post ones unlikely to make it, but there are 2 on my feed that post failures. Being a veterinarian seems so tough. The fact she looks to be sitting up on her legs makes me hopeful. It's so pitiful looking though, they always have that Charlie Brown frown.
The Barred Owl at the park down the street from my work is like 30 years old, one eye removed, severe cataracts in the other eye, and a partial wing amputation, but that guy's been chilling there for like 20 years the one worker said. You have to be tough to survive outdoors, so never write them off!