Merry Christmas to “owl,” and to (the) owl in this tree.
Forgive me for that horrible attempt at a joke, and let us forge ahead to quite the exciting and hilarious holiday story. Christmas time is all about opening up your home and welcoming in others to celebrate, but this Kentucky family was not expecting a “wild” visitor to sneak into their house for the holidays.
Gifts are usually left underneath the tree, but in 2023, there have been all kinds of wild animal surprises discovered in Christmas trees. One family discovered that a possum was calling their decorated tree home after it sneezed from within in, and another woman was sent into a screaming panic when a raccoon ran rampant through her Christmas tree.
This family in Kentucky had the same kind of holiday surprise when they found a baby owl was using their authentic Christmas tree as its home…within their home.
After going out to fulfill the family tradition of picking out a real Christmas tree, they got into their house and put up in their living room, and the baby owl went undetected inside of it for four days.
The baby bird was making itself at home inside the comfortably heated living space, and was only noticed when it got a little bit more brave and moved to the outer branches of the tree.
In fact, it wasn’t even anyone in the family that noticed the owl. It was instead a carpet cleaner who had come to the Kentucky family’s home to do some work, and was shocked to see the tree sway and move after he plugged in his cleaner near the tree.
Upon closer inspection, the carpet cleaner discovered the culprit who (owl pun intended) was rocking around the Christmas tree (Brenda Lee pun intended), and managed to catch it. He then shot a picture of him holding the baby owl to the homeowner, who assumed the carpet cleaner was trying to pull off a joke with a lifelike stuffed animal.
After getting the okay from the homeowner, the man took the baby bird outside into the family’s backyard and released it back into the wild. Hopefully the owl wasn’t hoping to stick around for Christmas, but it was probably best for the baby bird to get back out into the non-living-room trees outside.
You can view the news story covering the incident below:
