An injured owl found at the Happy Hollow Corn Maze and nursed back to life by the Salthaven West Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre has led to a partnership between the two local groups.
“They contacted us last fall, they had found an owl on their property that had been caught in a barbwire fence, they rescued it off the fence, brought it into us and we did some emergency treatment with him. We had him in care for a couple of months and were able to release him back into the wild in December,” said Megan Lawrence with Salthaven West.
This is the second straight year that Happy Hollow has used personal inspiration to develop the design for the corn maze.
After a fire threatened the corn maze in 2018, Happy Hollow dedicated its design to the Lumsden firefighters.
Then a chance encounter with Salthaven last fall led Happy Hollow owner Tiffany Schaefer to want to recognize the wild rehabilitation centre this year.
“It’s a nice little tradition to keep going,” Schaefer said.
“[Salthaven is] a non-profit, they take care of wildlife rehabilitation and last year, we had found an owl on our grounds and took it to them and nursed it back to health and released it here at Christmas last year.”
Salthaven is based out of Regina and it takes in sick, injured and orphaned wild animals with a goal of releasing them back into the wild when they’re healthy. The centre takes in about 1,000 animals each year.
“We were excited to get the call from Happy Hollow,” Lawrence said. “They sent us an email a couple of months saying that they were interested in having the design about Salthaven and it was pretty exciting and then when we saw it the other day, it’s gorgeous.”
Happy Hollow will be donating one dollar from all tickets sold on Oct. 5 to Salthaven.
