South Baker students gather to watch release of screech owl rescued by two sixth graders
Published 7:42 pm Thursday, March 20, 2025
Lynn Tompkins, executive director of Blue Mountain Wildlife, releases Jerry, a western screech owl rescued by two South Baker Intermediate sixth graders. (Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald)
South Baker Intermediate sixth graders Eli Rowe, right, and Xavior Fox, center, wait for Lynn Tompkins' call to open the door of the box containing Jerry, the western screech owl the students rescued near the school in early January. (Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald)
Jerry the screech owl was reluctant to relinquish his hold on a towel as Lynn Tompkins waits to release the bird at South Baker Intermediate School on March 20, 2025. (Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald)
Lynn Tompkins prepares to release Jerry, a western screen owl rescued by two South Baker Intermediate sixth graders,at South Baker Intermediate School on March 20, 2025. (Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald)
Students at South Baker Intermediate gather in the playground on March 20, 2025, to await the release of Jerry, a western screech owl rescued by two sixth graders near the school in early January. (Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald)
A couple hundred kids ages 10 to 13 is a cauldron of adolescent energy, the sort of latent power typically associated with tropical storms, but it only takes six ounces or so to hold them spellbound.
At least when the featherweight object is made of actual feathers.
A diminutive raptor named Jerry brought the South Baker Intermediate students onto the playground Thursday afternoon, March 20, despite a wind-driven squall of soft hail.
They came to watch the western screech owl take flight almost within sight of where he nearly died earlier this winter.
Jerry’s rescuers, sixth graders Xavior Fox and Eli Rowe, were standing beside Lynn Tompkins as their classmates in the dozens watched, huddled together 50 feet or so away.
Jerry’s return to freedom stumbled rather than soared for a minute or two.
When Rowe released the string holding the door to Jerry’s box, the owl, restored to health by Tompkins and her staff at Blue Mountain Wildlife near Pendleton, was reluctant to swap his dry perch for the cruel March wind.
Tompkins, who has nursed thousands of injured raptors over the past few decades, reached inside and gently ushered Jerry outside.
After coaxing the grayish-brown bird to release the blue towel clutched in its beak, Tompkins lifted Jerry slightly, opened her hands and let the owl fly.
The students clapped and cheered.
Jerry flew 20 feet or so and perched briefly in a maple tree.
Then he flapped a few more times and glided between the branches of a blue spruce at the southeast corner of the playground.
This seemed more to his liking.
The rescue
On a chilly morning in early January, Xavior and Eli were walking to school on their usual route.
Just south of the railroad underpass on Dewey Avenue, they saw what looked like a bird, motionless, on the sidewalk.
As they walked closer they recognized it was an owl.
What they thought was a baby owl, since it was scarcely the size of a toy football.
They wondered if it was dead, but as they approached the owl, in the unique way of owls, swiveled its head toward Eli.
“It looked right in my eye,” Eli said as he sat with Xavior in Thomas Morrow’s sixth grade classroom.
They were waiting for Tompkins to arrive with Jerry.
The whiteboard in the front of the classroom had a cleverly drawn owl drawn next to “Owl Release Day.”
The boys, realizing the owl was alive, decided to bring it to school, just a couple blocks away.
Xavior said the owl, only later to be known as Jerry, pinched his hand with a talon only once.
“After I picked him up he didn’t fight at all,” Xavior said.
When they got to school they showed the owl to Morrow, who is Xavior’s teacher.
(Eli is in Kelly Hood’s class.)
“I just thought it was weird the owl didn’t have any visible injuries,” Xavior said.
Morrow noticed that the owl had what appeared to be a hemorrhage in one eye and a small wound on its beak.
School officials called the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, which is how Jerry ended up with Tompkins.
“It was a weird experience,” Eli said.
The recovery
Over the next several weeks, Tompkins gave South Baker students occasional updates about Jerry’s progress.
And then release day was set for Thursday, the final day of classes before spring break.
Tompkins and two other staffers from Blue Mountain Wildlife brought Jerry, still in his box, to Morrow’s classroom.
An announcement on the school intercom stated the owl would be released at 1:25 p.m. A cavalcade of students surged across the playground toward the grass field next to the railroad tracks.
Prior to the release, Tompkins told students in Morrow’s class that western screech owls are cavity nesters, mean they make their homes in holes hollowed from trees.
She said a full-grown owl — she said Jerry is at least a year old — usually weigh just 5 to 8 ounces.
“They’re mostly feathers,” Tompkins said.
She told the students that Jerry has been thriving, eating two mice each night.
“He flies really good,” Tompkins said. “He’s going to be really happy to be released.”
She told the students that it’s quite likely that Jerry has some siblings near the school.
Jerry’s mother probably is protecting a clutch of four to six eggs that will start hatching soon, Tompkins said.
She said owls have eggs a few days apart, so the babies aren’t born all at once.
Although raptors such as hawks and eagles are renowned for their keen eyesight that helps them spot prey from hundreds of feet in the air, Tompkins said owls are night-hunters who rely on their silent flight and on their ears, which are slightly offset to allow the birds to triangulate on sounds.
Jayson has worked at the Baker City Herald since November 1992, starting as a reporter. He has been editor since December 2007. He graduated from the University of Oregon Journalism School in 1992 with a bachelor's degree in news-editorial journalism.
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