Just outside of Fargo I found this great horned owl sitting on the side of I-94. It was on the left side of the road, in the median grass right by the pavement. I happened to catch a glimpse out of the corner of my eye as I was going by and immediately recognized what it was. Since I knew there was no good reason for a GHO to be there, it had to be injured. The next exit was about 5 miles away so I went and turned around to come back to where the owl was. I had a box and a blanket with me so I parked on the side of the interstate (which made me nervous since there wasn't much of a shoulder on the left side) and walked up to the owl and threw the blanket over it. It didn't even acknowledge me until I got the blanket on me and I picked it up, at which point it grabbed one of my fingers with its talons and held on tight. I managed to get it off my finger and into the box. Then I spent the next 4 hours making dozens of phone calls to various people and organizations to figure out where I could take it. What I didn't want to do was turn around and drive three hours back to the Twin Cities to take it to the Raptor Center. First I talked to Karla Kinstler, owl expert and director of the Houston (MN) Nature Center, where I attended the owl festival last winter. She gave me a lead on some rehabbers in North Dakota. There weren't any that were anywhere close to where I was so through a series of many other phone calls and visits to a couple of places, I wound up at the Prairie Veterinary Hospital in Jamestown, ND, which is on I-94 about halfway between Fargo and Bismark. They do avian rescue and the vet there took a look at the owl. It turns out that the owl didn't have any obvious external injuries but was completely blind. Probably hit by a car and has a head injury. What we don't know is whether the injury and blindness are permanent or not. It's likely that the owl will wind up at the MN Raptor Center back in the Twin Cities for further care. It was an interesting and nerve-racking experience, because I've never handled an owl before, and also trying to track down a safe place for it while I'm traveling through a different state!