The raven who was flying around downtown Juneau with a blow dart lodged in its head was euthanized Tuesday night, Kathy Benner from the Juneau Raptor Center said.
Benner, the manager of the JRC, said in an email Wednesday that someone trapped the raven in a gated area at the Glory Hall homeless shelter at about 1 p.m. Tuesday. JRC personnel were called to the scene and were able to catch the bird — which had been eluding them since early April.
“The bird squeezed under a gate in front of a doorway,” Benner said in the email, “and then they put cardboard there to block him from getting back out until we arrived.”
They examined the raven and found that the blow dart — which had entered near the bird’s eye and was sticking through the other side of its head — had “severely damaged” the bird’s sinus cavity, Benner said. The raven was taken to a veterinarian and was humanely euthanized, Benner said.
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Prior to that, nobody had been able to catch the raven as it flew around downtown. Benner said in a recent interview that the bird appeared to be eating normally, and was flying well enough to evade would-be captors.
Shooting a raven or other migratory bird is illegal due to the Migratory Bird Act, but in a recent interview, Juneau Animal Control Officer Karen Wood said it’s difficult to track down people who shoot blow darts or pellet guns at animals.
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at amccarthy@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @akmccarthy.
