Video: Owl Snatches Angler’s Lure, Requires Emergency Rescue

Recently, a Texas angler perusing a lake in his kayak filmed a startling encounter with a creature he never expected to see on the end of his line—an owl.

Garry Olson Jr. told NBC affiliate KXAN that he was fishing on Lady Bird Lake, in Austin, Texas, with his GoPro rolling. At one point, he hooked and lost a large fish, but before he could retrieve his lure, an owl swooped down and struck it. “At first, I thought, ‘Wow, this is really cool.'” Olson said. “It was huge, the wingspan was like six or seven feet. As it got closer, I’m like, ‘Uh-oh, something is going on.’ It came right down and it picked [the lure] up.”

Unfortunately, the owl’s grip embedded the hooks into its foot. Tethered to Olson’s fishing line, it couldn’t fly away. Luckily for Olson, the owl didn’t panic, and in the video it seems somewhat complacent sitting on the bow of the kayak. “Hey, Owl, how are you? Are you enjoying your kayak ride? Me too.” Olson says to it in the video.

Olson waited almost an hour for animal control officers to arrive. Once they did, officers took the bird to a veterinarian, who was able to safely remove the barbed hook and release it back into the wild.

“At first, I thought my fishing morning was kind of ruined, but I looked at it from [the owl’s] perspective,” Olson said. “His morning was ruined, and I was just the guy to do it. Anyway, we parted on good terms.”