Last week in Georgia, the Newman family was finishing dinner when 10-year-old India, who was in the living room, exclaimed, "Oh my gosh!" She then walked back into the dining room and said, "Mama, that ornament scared me," before bursting into tears.
Upon further investigation, mom Katie Newman realized there was a live owl in her Christmas tree!
CNN reports that the family left their windows and doors open at night, in hopes that the bird would leave--but it didn't. They then fed it some raw chicken on the advice of a nearby nature center, which dispatched staff to capture the owl and return it to the wild.
The bird was apparently inside the tree when the Newmans bought it shortly after Thanksgiving.