Strangers stopped their cars one by one to free the owl

A great horned owl tangled in a barbed wire fence near Spearfish, South Dakota, was freed last week by a group of strangers who stopped their cars one by one to help. Sharon and Scott Jacobs spotted it while driving past private land. Scott thought it was a dead hawk. Sharon asked him to back up, walked toward the lump of feathers, and found it very much alive. They needed a bag for the owl's head and gloves for its talons. Scott had the bag. A passing driver named Brandon had the gloves, then produced the wire cutters nobody else had brought. The landowner's daughter arrived, called her father, and got the go-ahead to cut the bird loose. A veterinarian removed two steel barbs and said the owl would fly again. "Everybody's goal was to get this beautiful creature taken care of," Sharon told Cowboy State Daily. Black Hills Raptor Center plans to release it where it was found. Sharon intends to be there.