Great Horned Owl rides behind Ford Expedition grille
The beautiful Great Horned Owl. Image: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Northeast Region/Flickr/CC BY
It has been a big week for animals-stuck-in-cars stories. The first of two happened in Florida last week. A woman struck an owl with her Ford Expedition, but leaned the next day that it was unharmed, riding inside the grille of her Ford Expedition SUV.
Owl struck by Ford Expedition
On February 7, Sonji Coney Williams accidentally struck a large bird on the Florida Turnpike while traveling about 60 m.p.h. It was dark, and she didn’t stop, although she did feel remorseful.
“I was driving about 60 miles an hour,” she told KXAN News. “He never moved, and so, I said, ‘Oh, my God, I hit a bird,’ and I felt so bad but it was very dark and we didn’t pull over.”
Williams told ABC, “I’ve never experienced anything like this before in my life.” And neither have many other people — or owls, for that matter.
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Bird was taken for a ride
The next day, after driving about 60 miles, she was flagged down by another motorists who had seen big yellow eyes staring out from inside the grille of the vehicle.
“There was a family that pulled in front of my parking space and flagged me down and said, ‘Don’t move, don’t move, you have something in the grille of your truck,” Williams told ABC. She asked what it was and was told, “It’s an owl.” A Great Horned Owl, which are common in the Central Florida region, to be precise.
Florida Fish and Wildlife to the rescue
Williams felt terrible about the discovery. “I’m about to faint,” she said on a video distributed by the AP. She called the Florida Fish and Wildlife Department. A short time later an officer arrived and worked to free the beautiful avian predator from its rolling prison of molded plastic.
The gorgeous, bright-eyed animal can be seen in the video below. Animals lovers will be grateful to learn that, by all accounts, it was miraculously unharmed. That had to be one shot in a million, making it one very lucky Great Horned Owl.
Animals on not-so-joyous rides
And it wasn’t the only beast to take a frightening ride and emerge unscathed recently. In another related post, learn about Pepe the Puppy, and his surprise journey on the opposite side of the nation.
You can see the grille of a new Ford Expedition — and the rest of it, too, for that matter — at the Gus Johnson dealership in Spokane, Wash.
Video: ‘Owl Gets Stuck Inside Car Grille – Florida’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtD1EaIEpV4