A concrete-covered owl got donor feathers and flew home.

A great horned owl found stuck in a concrete mixer last October flew back into the wild this month, after six months of care at the Best Friends Animal Society's Wild Friends sanctuary in Kanab, Utah. A good Samaritan had called the sanctuary from 80 miles away. The team scraped off the concrete, then realized the harder problem. The owl's feathers were too damaged for silent flight, and his spring molt wasn't cooperating. So staff took a course in imping, a procedure they had never performed, which uses donor feathers and adhesive to rebuild a wing. Feathers came from a great horned owl of similar size that had died at a rescue in Northern Utah. On May 1, veterinarian Kelsey Paras and three Wild Friends staff spent 90 minutes replacing 10 primary feathers and one secondary on the right wing. The left wing needed nothing. Supervisor Bart Richwalski used a decibel reader to confirm the wingbeat was quiet enough. "I don't know that my heart was beating until I saw him leave," he said.