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Great Horned Owl – Monteen McCord introduces Frances

Frances, the great horned owl, found herself on the wrong end of a six foot tall pole trap one day while perusing the free range menu of a cock fighter. In her desperate attempt to free herself, she broke off the tip of her beak and pulled the trap loose from the wooden pole and dropped to the ground. She dragged the steel trap about 300 yards and was rescued by a neighbor of the mean old chicken guy. She was dropped off at a local vet’s office and I took the case from there and immediately got her down to my vet, David Martinez at Loving Hands Animal Hospital in Alpharetta.

The rusty  trap didn’t break her leg, but there was a deep 360 degree laceration where her foot joins her leg and was badly infected. I held her for about 4 months and it was touch and go for a while because we couldn’t get the infection under control. The third antibiotic did the trick and with daily irrigating with a solution of Sea 90, she was released back to the wild. Normally the adults are released back into their territory, but she would just make a bee line back to the cock fighter’s house, so we had a nice release in the wilds outside of Dahlonega.