By Madison Butkus
Hometown Weekly Reporter
What was supposed to be a typical night run at the Noon Hill Reservation in Medfield quickly turned into a scary situation for local resident Ken Wadness. On Monday, November 13th, Wadness stated that he was attacked by a Barred Owl right after his dog, Micah, almost got attacked.
This rare type of attack left visible marks on the back of Wadness’ head but he was lucky enough to not need any type of medical attention. Wadness has been living in Medfield for around twenty years and has recently retired from being a school teacher in Dover for the past thirty two years. He currently is working as an EMT in Dover and usually takes runs with Micah at night when his schedule allows it.
For as long as he can remember, Wadness and Micah have been running at the Noon Hill Reservation, mainly at night / three days a week, and nothing like this has ever happened to them before. When speaking about the incident, Wadness stated, “We probably started our run around 5:15 pm and we were just going to do a two mile run. We went over the summit, coming down about a quarter mile, and this was now around 5:50 pm. I then saw this just like a blur of a bird, and the owl to my lower right just flew right over Micah. My dog Micah is about eleven pounds so it could have easily taken him. I look around and I don’t originally see anything so I told Micah that we need to get going. So we started jogging again, maybe about five steps forward, and I felt this huge whack on my head. It literally felt like a forward whiplash and this Barred Owl’s talons went right into the back of my head. It was definitely like a shock and those talons were extremely sharp, almost like needles or nails. I was wearing a headlamp so I started shining it around and there he is literally within twenty feet of me, just sitting on a tree branch. He was higher than I was but he just kept staring at me and not going anywhere.”
Being a nature photographer, Wadness quickly pulled out his cellphone and took photos and videos of the owl staring back at him, even though he knew his head was bleeding. When deciding that it was finally time to start heading back to the car, Wadness grabbed a stick that was about four feet tall and carried it over his head in his left hand while he carried Micah in his right. About every two minutes, Wadness explained that he looked back to see if the owl was following him or going to attack again. After about a half a mile, they both made it safely to the car and headed home.
When arriving at home, he told his wife and children about what had happened. According to Wadness, they already think he is crazy for running at night and ninety percent of the time, he is usually the only one at Noon Hill during that time.
Due to what had happened, Wadness asked his wife to post about his story on The Friends of Medfield Facebook page so that they could warn everyone. He went on to state, “I said we should post this on that Facebook page so we can warn everybody since I know that many people walk their tiny dogs like Micah on these trails. And if you are there at the end of the day, this is their territory and I wouldn’t want the dogs or anybody to get hurt.” By sharing his story, he also found out about two more residents in the town of Medfield that were attacked by Barred Owl within the last couple of years.
Wadness is extremely thankful that he wore his headlamp that had a battery back on the back of it because without it, he believes the talons of the owl could have gone much deeper into his head. There was a large scratch on the battery pack itself and each talon mark was all centered around the pack as well.
While the incident was definitely frightening for Wadness, he stated that he will still continue to run at Noon Hill Reservation at night but will most likely stray away from using that specific path.
