Kindness Repaid

Kindness Repaid

It all began when a truck driver started to cross over the Chesapeake Bridge going west from Kent Island. It was night and the driver of an empty sixteen-wheeler was returning from dropping off a load of peat moss in Wilmington, Delaware, when he saw an owlet in his headlights. He braked before reaching the owlet, put on his emergency warning lights, got down from the cab of his truck, and moved the owlet out of harm's way.

This act of kindness did not go unnoticed. The mother barn owl, unable to save her young herself, was in a panic until her fledgling was saved by the stranger. With the owlet safe from the heavily trafficked highway, she gently carried the little one back to the nest in the rafters of the old barn beside Route 50.

Later the mother owl told other Kent Island owls how her baby had been saved, and one wise old owl suggested that they should reciprocate the kindness and warn drivers when there was danger ahead on the bridge. That night they formed the Bridge Watcher's Safety Wing. The owls who regularly searched for prey along the verge of the highway leading to the bridge agreed to fly over the bridge looking for traffic dangers and to try to warn drivers of that danger.

It took a while, but they learned to fly alongside a driver's window hooting if there was danger ahead, like a stalled vehicle, a wreck, or bridge damage. They were pleased with how fast the drivers learned to associate the owls with danger ahead. It was not long before the drivers started relying on being warned by the owls.

One night one of the Bridge Watchers saw a car stop on the bridge, the passenger door open, and a young man child leap from the car and start running down the bridge back toward the Island, toward oncoming traffic.

The driver of the car got out of the car and yelled at the child but did not chase after him. Instead, he got back in the car and continued across the bridge.

The owl, aware of the danger that the child was in, flew ahead of the child, almost at stall speed, flapping her wings to warn oncoming traffic. She was seen, understood, and oncoming traffic stopped until a couple in a Subaru Outback convinced the child to join them in their car for safety.

The owls never knew the whole story, only that a man child was in danger and one of their own had intervened and helped bring the dicey situation to a happy conclusion. At the Bridge Watchers Safety Wing awards dinner, Gwyn, the owl on duty that night was singled out for outstanding service and presented with three fresh mice as a token of the club's appreciation.

Maryland State and local police discovered that Jelen, the eight-year-old boy who jumped from the car, had been lured into the car at a fast-food restaurant in Cambridge, Maryland, and he was reunited with his grateful and distraught parents. A trucker who witnessed the stopped car wisely recorded the license plate of the vehicle, and although the car was stolen and abandoned in Annapolis after crossing the bridge, the car thief and kidnapper was identified by his fingerprints. After he was apprehended and arrested, Jelen picked him out of a picture line up shown to him by the police.

The police and the press were never told the role Gwyn played, although several drivers had seen the barn owl protecting the boy. They assumed, correctly, that no one would believe them.

But you can believe me. Gwyn and the Bridge Watchers Safety Wing were the heroes that night. And it all flowed from a kind trucker stopping to save an owlet.