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The owl, named Raoul, is recovering at an animal hospital with hopes to rehabilitate him and release him back into the wild come spring.Darryl Dagen\/Courtesy photo<\/p>\nLast Wednesday was not a typical day at work for Edwards resident Darryl Dagen.<\/p>\n
A fly-fishing guide of 21 years, Dagen was fishing with a client on the Eagle River when he spotted something out of the ordinary on a rock in the middle of the river.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt first, I thought it was a tumbleweed that got stuck out there and had a bunch of leaves on it,\u201d Dagen said. \u201cThen I realized it was a horned owl.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was sitting on this rock, as big as a beach ball, with his feathers all spread out and everything. It looked like he was trying to dry himself off,\u201d Dagen said.<\/p>\n
Dagen\u2019s client noticed a red-tailed hawk was watching the owl from above. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe think that this red-tailed hawk didn\u2019t like the owl being in its territory or something, hit it, broke its wing and knocked it out of the air into the river,\u201d Dagen said.<\/p>\n
As Dagen and his client watched, the owl \u201cgot nervous, and tried to jump off the rock, and it started struggling in the water,\u201d Dagen said. \u201cThen I thought, that thing is in trouble. It tried to fly and it couldn\u2019t fly.\u201d<\/p>\n
The owl, named Raoul, is recovering at an animal hospital with hopes to rehabilitate him and release him back into the wild come spring.Darryl Dagen\/Courtesy photo<\/p>\n
Dagen launched into action, wading into the river to reach the owl. \u201cWhen I got to the owl, he was still struggling. His head was underwater, and I could see it had been underwater for a while,\u201d Dagen said.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cAnd I\u2019m like, this thing is drowning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dagen scooped up the owl in his fishing net and brought it to the bank, where he dried it off with his shirt.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he was in shock or something, but he really didn\u2019t struggle or give me a hard time,\u201d Dagen said. \u201cHe was just sitting there blinking at me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dagen said he knew right away that the owl was injured, with a broken left wing.<\/p>\n
On the bank, he called Devin Duval, the district wildlife manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, who picked up the owl and brought it to a specialized veterinarian.<\/p>\n
What comes next for the owl<\/p>\n
The owl, identified by a veterinarian as a year-old male great horned owl, is named Raoul.<\/p>\n
Dagen called the animal hospital for an update and heard that the veterinarian had isolated Raoul\u2019s wing to try to reduce the swelling and that the owl had water in its lungs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe owl is not completely out of the woods yet because they are worried about it getting pneumonia,\u201d Dagen said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If the owl makes a full recovery, it will be up for release early next summer. If the wing is too badly damaged to heal, the bird may need to be euthanized.<\/p>\n
Dagen said he offered to take care of the bird if it was deemed too injured to return to the wild. <\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018Listen, give it to me, I\u2019ll feed it for the rest of its life so it doesn\u2019t have to fly,’\u201d he said. \u201cAnd they said, \u2018That would be illegal.’\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo hopefully he\u2019ll be OK. They said if he does make it that and they\u2019re able to repair its wing and he can be released, they said that they would call me and I could take it back to the spot where we rescued it and let it loose next year,\u201d Dagen said.<\/p>\n
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The owl suffered a broken wing and water in its lungs.Darryl Dagen\/Courtesy photo<\/p>\n
\u2018Why should I rescue one predator from another?\u2019<\/p>\n
As a longtime fishing guide and outdoorsman, Dagen is familiar with getting up close and personal with wildlife, from elk to raptors.<\/p>\n
This was not the first time Dagen has rescued an animal \u2014\u00a0it was not even his first owl. <\/p>\n
\u201cI rescued a young horned owl, I\u2019d say eight or nine years ago,\u201d he said. \u201cI rescued a baby goose one time on the Eagle River. I rescued a red-tailed hawk one time when I was hunting. I think it\u2019s good to be interested in how important raptors are in our river life and in our ecology here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The experience of rescuing Raoul after he was (presumably) injured by a fellow raptor made Dagen think: \u201cWhy should I rescue one predator from another predator? Why should I interfere with that?\u201d<\/p>\n
He found two reasons to step in: To preserve biodiversity and to encourage each predator to hunt at its skill level.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like the more diversity there is in the predator world, they\u2019re less likely, if there\u2019s a disease that happens among one species \u2026 to get wiped out,\u201d Dagen said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of the skill and power \u2026 the owl is much slower, more of a disadvantaged predator\u201d compared to the red-tailed hawk,\u201d Dagen said. \u201cI feel like if I helped that owl, I\u2019m forcing that other predator to go higher and hunt game that is more difficult, that is more matched to its skill level.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last Wednesday was not a typical day at work for Edwards resident Darryl Dagen. A fly-fishing guide of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-227891","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}