BEND, Ore. — Cats have nine lives, it’s often said, but there’s at least one screech owl (nicknamed “Screechy”) out flying again in the wild that is definitely on at least Life No. 2, having tangled with a freight train heading north from Bend this summer, the Bend Bugle reported.
The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway freight train, 78 cars pulled by a 415,000-pound locomotive, was “cruising down the hill” at about 30 mph north of Madras, heading north toward the Columbia River Gorge almost three months ago when it struck the small owl in the middle of the night, said BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas in Seattle.
The bird, a male juvenile about 18 inches long and six months old, was found “wrapped up in the ‘grab iron,’” the railing on the locomotive that crews use while climbing the steps to board the train, Melonas said.
“This bird is mangled,” he said, describing what the crew found. “Its wing is twisted and bloody. The bird had head trauma. The conductor goes out on front of the cab, grabs it, puts it in the box” as the train keeps traveling toward the Wishram junction, where north-south and east-west train tracks meet.
“The crew assumed the bird was dead,” Melonas said, but “right before Wishram, there’s movement in the box. The bird stumbles out, staggers, falls.”
The crew put the winged survivor back in the box and took it to the Wishram depot, where a BNSF worker started making calls at 2 a.m., looking for help, Melonas said. An Astoria veterinarian referred her to a wildlife rehabilitation center in nearby Rowena, where the woman took the owl the next day.
Fast-forward two-plus months.
Melonas got a call two weeks ago, saying the bird — after surgery, with pins in its restored wings — was ready to be released. The railroad spokesman traveled to the gorge for the big send-off, where he learned that the owl was in good enough shape to have killed and piled up nine mice the night before.
“So we drive up a big cliff on a gravel road,” Melonas later recalled. “The bird doesn’t leave the box. They tilted it sideways. The bird finally walks out, ruffles its feathers, then takes off like nothing ever happened.”
“It’s remarkable,” Melonas said of the bird’s survival and recovery. “It’s amazing. I’ve seen grizzly bears and moose die instantly when struck by a train. We were overjoyed to see the bird fly away.”