An Ohio State Highway Patrol Trooper on March 9th noticed a northern barred owl struggling along the side of US 30 near US 42 and quickly stopped to render aid to the animal, bringing it to the Ohio Bird Sanctuary in Richland County, WHIO reports, citing a March 20th Facebook post from the Mansfield OSHP precinct, where presumably it is still being rehabilitated or has since been released rather than euthanized. You’d think that the patrol and/or the affiliate station would offer a little more detail about how things shook out for the bird given the 11 day lag from the rescue to the post.

Nevertheless a cop was kind to a wild animal that would otherwise most likely have perished from predation, starvation, or a vehicle strike if not for his intervention. You can appreciate the act of kindness and mercy toward one of God’s creations, an individual member of a species onto which mankind projects wisdom and enigmatic intent simply through pareidolia of a facial “expression” and thus personality. Such a mass perception of the owl belies the reality that they’re roughly on par with pigeons in intelligence, ranked below more prosaic, ubiquitous, and middle-sized corvids – as in common crows, ravens, and magpies – as the master brains of the North American Bird-iverse.

Still, that you’d be far less likely to see a story about a cop rescuing an injured crow doesn’t diminish the act that did occur. Just, you know, try to appreciate it without any intrusion of questioning which bird species illicit sympathy based solely on their appearance. Suppressing that thought will in turn crowd out any of the predictable “Oh bUt tHeN tEh c0P pR0LLy sh0T suM 1nn0CeNt dUdE aFtER tHaT” and maybe even all the actually horrible shit happening in the world that the headline was meant to be a little “SEE THINGS R NOT ALL BAD” respite from. Act accordingly, people.