Dan Jordan was leaving for work one morning when he saw a fluffy baby sitting all alone in his front yard. He got out of his car to investigate and discovered it was a baby great horned owl who had likely fallen out of his nest.
Immediately, Jordan’s plan for the day changed. Instead of heading off to work, he carefully scooped up the baby owl and drove him to Owl’s Nest Sanctuary for Wildlife, determined to help him.
Owl’s Nest Sanctuary for Wildlife
“He was in good condition,” Kris Porter, director of Owl’s Nest Sanctuary for Wildlife, told The Dodo. “They fall like little fluff balls. We get lucky that a lot of them don’t get damaged at all.”
Many sanctuaries would take the baby in and raise him until he was strong enough to be released, but Owl’s Nest Sanctuary for Wildlife operates a little differently. Their goal is always to get the baby owls reunited with their mom, so Porter and her team headed back to the property to begin searching.
Owl’s Nest Sanctuary for Wildlife
The property was an entire acre of oak trees, so it took some perseverance to find the right tree. Finally, the group found a nest on the ground — and when they looked up, they saw another fluffy little butt hanging on for dear life.
After retrieving the second baby, the team built a platform high up in the tree so they could return them there safely. The goal was to make it easy for the babies to be reunited with their mom, who was actually watching from nearby the entire time.
Owl’s Nest Sanctuary for Wildlife
“We knew she was there because she was making defensive hoots at me on the side, so I knew she was in the area,” Porter said.
Once the platform was built, the team needed someone to get the babies up onto it. Luckily, Jordan owns his own landscaping company, Creek Bank Lawncare, so he was just the man for the job.
Owl’s Nest Sanctuary for Wildlife
Once everyone had cleared out, the mom owl swooped onto the platform and was reunited with her babies at last. It was the happiest ending anyone could have asked for and another successful rescue in the books for Porter and her team.
“This is the heart of what we do,” the sanctuary wrote on Facebook. “It’s not about bringing them in. It’s not about raising every baby start to finish. It’s about keeping families together whenever humanly possible. That reunion? That’s the win.”
