Police officers in Ōpōtiki gave a tiny owl a ride after they found it wandering on the road.
The Bay of Plenty Police said in an Instagram post that Senior Constables Marty Madsen and Willy Searle, who were working a late shift in Ōpōtiki, spotted the animal and initially thought that it was a hedgehog.
Upon closer inspection they realised it was an owl that had been “clipped by a car.”
“I put him in the car and shot back into town as Marty is a bit of a bird whisperer,” Searle said. “By the time I got back to town, he started to warm up and flap around a bit.”
The officers decided to return the owl to the wild at Waiotahe Beach.
Speaking to news agency UPI, Searle said the encounter was “a bit of a privilege, really.”
The Instagram post remarked that “late shifts in Ōpōtiki are never dull, but this one turned into more of a ‘hoot’ than usual.”
