Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
- A team rescued an owl from the water at Salt Lake City's new water reclamation facility under construction.
- The owl was treated for exhaustion and released back into the wild successfully.
- The rescue video went viral, amassing over 300,000 views on Instagram.
SALT LAKE CITY — Jake Wilkins was getting ready for what they assumed would be a typical day working on Salt Lake City's new water reclamation facility back in October when one of his workers stationed at a concrete basin started frantically waving to catch his attention.
Wilkins, assistant superintendent for PCL Construction, walked over to see what the matter was when the employee pointed down toward something floating in the structure's water. He quickly realized that it was an owl, sprawled out and sluggishly floating above the water.
Without hesitation, the team started to get into action and rescued the owl after several attempts before the bird was later released back into the wild. Their rescue was caught on video, which has now gained over 300,000 views on Instagram since it was posted on Dec. 9.
A frantic rescue
The construction's first attempt to save the female barn owl happened before the video started. Wilkins, explaining the rescue while on KSL NewsRadio's "Dave and Dujanovic" Wednesday, said the bird was able to climb onto a temporary stairwell, while he tried to pick it up after putting on welding gloves and a face shield for protection — but that effort failed.
The bird, he said, fluttered back into the cold water. They briefly tried to use a rescue buoy before turning to other equipment scattered across the site.
"We were trying to utilize the resources we had and figured what better thing to use to get it out than the crane?" he said.
Wilkins ran over to the site's crane team, and they formulated a plan to rig the tower crane in the middle of the site with a grated metal basket that they could lower into the water to scoop the bird out. The video shows the bird lying in a corner of the red basket as she is hoisted back to land.
A quick recovery
The owl — affectionately dubbed "Phelps" or "Ledecky" by some of the crew, as nods to the famed Olympic swimmers — was too exhausted and perhaps too cold to move, so the construction team dried her off and took her to a warming area after checking online how they should handle the creature. After doing some additional searches, they came across contact info for the Wildlife Center of Salt Lake — but it wasn't open yet.
Carpenters on site quickly constructed a makeshift birdcage that Wilkins used to transport the owl to the conservation nonprofit once it opened. In a statement, Wildlife Center officials said they were concerned about complications of pneumonia or exhaustion.
However, the owl responded well to the fluids, pain medication and rest she was prescribed. They ran a few more tests before she was released back into the wild five days after the ordeal somewhere around Rose Park and the Great Salt Lake wetlands — not far from the construction site.
"She was released back into her home habitat ... and flew off (literally) into the sunset," Wildlife Center of Salt Lake officials wrote.
Her release was also captured on video. Wilkins said that the video puts a smile on his face.
"I can't say I shed any tears over it, but it was definitely a good feeling," he said.
