A great horned owl hung from a barbed-wire fence near Spearfish, South Dakota, and one driver after another stopped. In Northumberland, twenty volunteers spent two years putting a closed railway back together.

The owl was hanging off a barbed-wire fence beside a road near Spearfish, South Dakota, when Scott Jacobs drove past on 1 October. 1 He told his wife it looked like a hawk, and that he thought it was dead, and he kept driving. 2

Sharon Jacobs made him back up. 2 She has rescued horses, cats and dogs, and she got out of the truck in silver heels — her "Michael Jackson shoes," she called them — and ran down the dirt road at what she had taken for a pile of wire. 2 Close up, it was a great horned owl, its feathers moving in the wind. 2 It turned its head, stared at her and started clicking its beak, which is how the species signals distress. 2 She talked to it the way she calms a frightened horse. "It's OK, buddy," she said. "I'm here to help you. We're here to help you." 2

They had a bag to put over the bird's head, which helps keep it calm, and no gloves. 2 A second driver pulled up and asked what was happening. 2 His name was Brandon, he managed shifts at Lucky's, and he had gloves. He had wire cutters in his vehicle too. 2 Then the property owner's daughter arrived. Sharon asked whether they could cut the fence, and the young woman telephoned her father, who said to cut it. 2

Scott held one of the owl's legs and prised a foot free. The owl put its other foot on his gloved hand. 2 Brandon pulled off his sweatshirt to cover the bird, and Scott gathered it against himself, one hand holding its feet secure. 2

Sharon had already telephoned her vet, who agreed to meet them at his office. 2 He walked in holding roughly a foot of barbed wire with blood on two of the barbs. The owl's bones appeared intact. 2

She called South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks, the Black Hills Raptor Center and Reptile Gardens. 2 The owl went to the raptor centre, where Barbara Alexander, a transporter there, said the bird had come through with its patagium whole — the membrane along the leading edge of a wing that a bird needs in order to fly. 2 Alexander said the centre's director, Maggie Engler, called that short of a miracle. 2 The bird was on painkillers and antibiotics, and the plan is to release it back in the territory it came from. 2 "I have every intention of being there," Sharon said. "And I know I'll cry." 2

Seven years ago, in a Black Hills storm, another great horned owl sat on the peak of Sharon's garage roof and was struck by lightning that entered through its chest and left through its back. 2 A Lakota friend told her to bury it on the land and tell nobody where, because horned owls carry the role of feminine protectors in that tradition. 2 Afterwards she learned that with the bird standing on the roof, the strike would probably have taken the garage instead. 2 "That owl died," she said. "I got to help save this one." 2

In Northumberland, twenty volunteers have been staying with one disused railway for two years. 3 The Woodhorn Narrow Gauge Railway runs about a kilometre through the Queen Elizabeth II Country Park at Ashington, and it had stood closed since 2018. 3 The group took it over in 2024. They had met to tinker with old engines, one of the volunteers, Christine Heath, said, "and then got a bit ambitious" and decided to "restore the whole track." 3

Then came the part with less to do with engines. The group needed a lease from Northumberland County Council, because it was the document that kept the volunteers safe from eviction and the one every funder asked to see before committing money. The terms first offered were too expensive. 3 In September the two sides agreed a 25-year lease, with help from the law firm Muckle LLP. The council has also given the group £15,000 towards refurbishing the lakeside platform and £5,000 towards restoring rolling stock. 3

Heath said the restoration is nearly finished, and she hopes the railway opens to the public around Easter 2027. 3 "It just gives you a bit of breathing space," she said. 3 The council said it looks forward to seeing the railway open in the coming months. 3 The group's own pages are at woodhornrailway.com. 4

I keep coming back to the two plainest details in this issue — the wire cutters that were already in the car, and the 25 years a council finally signed over — and to how much of both stories rested on them.