Free Bird

If you spend enough time on the fields and trails of the school’s property in eastern Goochland County, you’re likely to see everything from deer to Canada geese to hawks to foxes to an occasional skunk, perhaps even a snake or two, and, as lore has it, a bear cub.

 

Doxey, who was Collegiate’s varsity field hockey coach and Director of Athletics at the time, had seen pretty much all of them. What she hadn’t seen, though, was a great horned owl, a nocturnal, predatory creature, caught in the netting of a batting cage in broad daylight, hanging upside down, and unable to free itself.

 

The long, rectangular cage is located on the western edge of Field 11, which is just south of the back parking lot and southeast of the Charlie Blair Soccer Field.

 

The JV baseball team often uses the field, and the guys were planning to practice later that day.

 

Time, then, was of the essence.

 

“I thought, Oh, my gosh, I have to get this thing down and get it out of here,” Doxey said one day recently as she recounted the moment. “I could see that its eyes were closed, and I thought it might be dead, but as I got closer to it, it opened one of its huge eyes, so I knew it was alive.”

 

How can I help it? she wondered.

 

“His feet were all tangled up in the netting,” she said. “I needed to have something like scissors or a knife to cut the netting. That’s when I called M.H. She’s a really great animal person.”

 

M.H., of course, is M.H. Bartzen, Doxey’s close friend of many years and longtime assistant hockey coach.

 

Turns out she and her friend Lauren Jenkins were already on the premises, waiting for their daughters to finish lacrosse practice. In short order, they arrived on the scene. Bartzen even had a pair of scissors.

 

“The owl’s legs were totally locked up,” Doxey recalled. “With no gloves, no nothing, M.H. tucked it underneath her arm, head down, and just started cutting. The bird just sat there as still as could be. It knew we were helping.

 

“She finally got the net off, tucked its wings under it, and put in on the ground not facing us.

 

“It turned its head, did a 180 and looked right at us, then flew off into the woods. Its mate was waiting in a tree, and they flew off together.

 

“It was pretty exciting. You never get that close to an owl because they only come out at night. It was clearly in a jam. It looked like it really appreciated what we did. How cool was that!”

 

Bartzen, who grew up on a farm in Martinsburg, West Virginia, is no stranger to up-close-and-personal encounters with animals, including untamed, potentially dangerous wildlife.

 

“I’m a crazy animal person,” she said, “so this was super cool, but not cool that he was all knotted up, particularly his right talon. So we started to cut, and, really, as an animal person, I should have known better. You can really get yourself hurt doing that (without protective clothing). Those talons are deadly, but we didn’t even think about that.”

 

With Jenkins’s assistance, the entire process of freeing the owl took, maybe, minutes.

 

“The one most shocking thing about wildlife is that when they’re in real need, it’s amazing what they can do,” Bartzen said. “I should have had gloves on. I should have taken more precautions, but I didn’t feel like there was time. He went right along with us. He cooperated beautifully. It seemed like he was so appreciative.”

 

If owls are as wise as they’re reputed to be, how then did this one become entangled in the netting of the batting cage?

 

“I know how he got in there,” Bartzen said. “He was hunting at night, and they’re ruthless when they’re hunting.”

 

That said…

 

“It was so amazing,” she said. “I have a newfound respect for the beauty of that creature. I was just so happy that he was able to fly off.”

~Weldon Bradshaw