They were waiting in the drive-thru line, taking the usual pauses, when someone in the car pointed out something odd.
A clump of feathers sat motionless between two vehicles, drawing curious looks from others, too.
The Utah family pulled over and stepped out, wondering if what they saw was simply debris or something more. The closer they got, the more they realized this wasn’t just trash.
They crouched down, and the feathers moved. The shape beneath shifted ever so slightly, enough to make them stop in their tracks.
What began as a quick stop for food turned into a rescue none of them expected.
What Was It?
A resident named Tracy Jester first spotted the mysterious clump of feathers when she realized that the line at the drive-thru wasn’t moving.
Jester told The Dodo: “I get out of the car, and I see these people are trying to shoo something.”
The woman got closer only to realize that there were people there trying to help a red-tailed hawk. The bird was on the ground and it looked like it was injured.
No one knew exactly what to do or how to help the poor animal, so Jester immediately intervened.
Jester said: “I got a feeling like, ‘OK, I gotta do something here.’ It didn’t sit well with us to just kind of drive away.”
So later, she called several wildlife rescuers, but there was just one problem; it was a Sunday, and hardly any one of them was working that day.
Just as Jester was running out of options, Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah (WRCNU) decided to help.
A Drive To The Rescue Organization
Jester’s husband wrapped the hawk in a sweater, and brought her to the car. The WRCNU was about an hour away, so they needed to take the hawk there.
Jester said: “You could just tell, I think, in this little animal’s eyes that it must have known that we were the people that were going to come and help her out.”
Everyone was feeling a bit uneasy as to how the hawk, now named Butter, would react to being in a car, but everything went smoothly.
After arriving at the WRCNU in Utah, the rescuers there did a quick examination of the hawk, and they realized that it was in pretty rough shape.
Butterscotch had problems with parasites, but the treatment was working. The hawk is making an incredible recovery.
Jester ended by saying: “The last day that I called, I spoke to someone [who] said, ‘You know, if you had not brought her in the day that you did, if you didn’t call, this girl would not be here at all.”
Thanks to the brilliant intervention of Jester’s family, this hawk was released back into the wild where it is thriving once again.