Heather Wright/The Independent

You might call Jaclyn Sanders eagle-eyed.

Sanders, who has won international acclaim as the owner of Guild Chocolates, is getting praise for a different reason – her role in rescuing a Great Horned Owl.

The majestic birds live in any semi-open areas with trees or grasslands, according to the National Audubon Society, but not usually in small towns. But that’s exactly where Sanders spotted the owl.

She was going out the back to drop her kids off at school, when she saw something.

“Behind my building, there’s a little shed that’s between a couple properties, and it was perched right on the shed,” she says. “I almost didn’t see it because it looked like a pile of leaves on top of the garage – with all the browns – but there it was.

“I saw it and I thought, ‘oh, it’s weird that it’s out in the middle of the day.’”
Sanders decided to check back in a hour to see if the owl was still there, thinking if it was “there’s probably an issue.”

The Great Horn was still on the shed when she returned, so she called the Bluewater Centre for Raptor Rehabilitation Monday. “And sure enough, it being out in the middle of the day really alerted them,” Sanders said.

It wasn’t really a surprise the chocolatier knew a lot about the Great Horned Owls; there is a big fan in her house.
“It’s my son’s favourite bird…so this was a big deal in our household to have a Great Horned Owl so close,” she says.

“On the one hand, it was thrilling to see one in nature up close, but then on the other hand, it’s like, oh, there’s got to be something wrong if he’s out in the middle of the day like that, because you know they’re nocturnal and they they’re normally up high in a tree hidden.”

Sanders’s son was fascinated. “Work definitely came to a screeching halt that day, and that owl became our lives.”

The family had a good view of the bird from their second-storey window.

“We knew not to get too close because we didn’t want to frighten it. But he was just so thrilled to see one in person. I think he owns nine…plush owls, so this was a chance of a lifetime for him to see such a huge Great Horned Owl just so close,” Sanders said.

“He watched from out the window when the raptor rescue squad came to get it, and he just thought this whole thing was thrilling.”

Linn Eves of the Rehabilitation Centre was also thrilled. “This Great Horned Owl was very lucky to be spotted,” she said in a social media post, lauding Sanders for noticing the unusual behaviour.

Eves and a volunteer were able to coax the bird off the roof of the shed and bring it to the ground.
Sanders says at first the team was worried the bird might have ingested some sort of poison. “That was very worrying,” she says.

An x-ray revealed a fractured Ulna – a bone in the wing – which Eves says will heal once its bandaged.
“I’m so relieved that it was actually just a break compared to what it could have been,” Sanders said.