No one really thought it would happen.
A rare Virginia falcon that escaped in Fort Wayne, Ind., has been recaptured in western Ohio.
Workers at a cement factory in rural Paulding County caught the peregrine falcon in a box Wednesday morning, Ohio wildlife officials said. The bird, with leather straps on its legs, had flown about 30 miles.
"It was like finding a needle in a haystack," said Dave McRuer, director of veterinary medicine at the Wildlife Center of Virginia, a wild-animal hospital in Waynesboro. "I'm absolutely ecstatic."
The falcon looked like it hadn't eaten since it escaped March 9, McRuer said.
Wildlife experts in the Toledo area are caring for the bird, which will be returned to Virginia.
The falcon was found injured Oct. 12 near Shockoe Slip in Richmond. It apparently had run into a high-rise window. The Waynesboro wildlife center treated it and then turned it over to two Virginia falconers, who were training it to be released.
The falcon escaped in Fort Wayne when the falconers took it with them on a trip, so they could tend to it, and their car was broken into.
rspringston@timesdispatch.com
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