Half-blind owl dies weeks after escaping Florida rescue center during storm

UPDATE: Charlie the great horned owl has died, the Raptor Center of Tampa Bay said Aug. 22. He was scheduled for a blood transfusion as part of his recovery but died “unexpectedly overnight.”

The original story is below.

A beloved half-blind owl escaped his enclosure at a Florida raptor center and was missing for weeks as rescuers scoured the area looking for him.

Now, Charlie is home.

When Hurricane Debby swept across Florida’s Gulf Coast, the great horned owl got loose, the Raptor Center of Tampa Bay said Aug. 5.

The 4-year-old bird is blind in one eye and has lived at the raptor center since he was 6 weeks old, rescuers said. He doesn’t know how to hunt and can’t fly very well, so his carers feared he was getting weaker the longer he stayed out in the wild.

As rescuers searched day and night for Charlie, the community rallied to help.

“Our search team is phenomenal,” rescuers said on Facebook. “We also are tired as we do search around the clock and we need help.”

Locals said they would sit outside and listen for him while others papered the town with flyers or got out binoculars in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the lost owl.

They focused their efforts in Brandon, about a 13-mile drive east from downtown Tampa.

A little over a week after Charlie disappeared, he was spotted in a subdivision and the team doubled down on its search efforts there. But they didn’t see the owl in that area again.

As the days dragged on, rescuers grew increasingly worried.

“He does not know how to hunt. We feel pretty confident in that,” the raptor center’s president Nancy Murrah told WFTS. “And so we’re reaching a point where his resources will be diminished.”

Rescuers shared their leads had dried up as they responded to calls about owl sightings that weren’t Charlie.

“Last night, our efforts consisted of continually calling Charlie all night long,” rescuers wrote on Facebook. “We had put out over 2000 flyers and knocked on over 500 doors somebody out there please help us find him.”

Finally, on Aug. 19, they got the call.

A homeowner had spotted Charlie in her backyard, and Murrah drove over as soon as she could.

There was the owl, sitting on the fence at a home less than a mile away from home.

“I held a rat up and said ‘let’s go home buddy,’ and he was all for that,” Murrah told WHBQ.

A video taken by the homeowner shows Murrah catching and cradling the owl.

“It’s a huge relief that we found him and that we found him alive,” Murrah told the outlet.

Charlie had lost weight, but he ate and had fluids as he began the road to recovery.

The raptor center thanked the community for its support.

“People we didn’t know last week are now our friends,” rescuers wrote on Facebook. “People who didn’t know there were owls in their neighborhood now see them at night. A great example of a community coming together to help a lost owl.”

This story was originally published August 20, 2024 at 3:57 PM with the headline "Half-blind owl dies weeks after escaping Florida rescue center during storm."