Attacking Owl Chills Anchorage Skiing

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - An "owl gone bad" returned with a vengeance over the weekend, this time attacking two skiers and putting one in the hospital, a doctor said.

A wooded section of Hilltop Ski Area in south Anchorage was closed Saturday after the third attack in two days by a big bird that swoops from the trees without warning and lands on the heads of skiers, said John Speegle Evans of the ski patrol.

Evans said state game authorities had been notified.

The bird attacks silently, hits hard, then disappears before the victim knows what hit him.

Like each of its other bloody victims, 12-year-old Paul Light said he had no idea what was going on Saturday when he felt a sharp jolt to his head as he and a friend skied through the woods off one of the main trails.

"I didn't know what it was at first," said Light, after returning home from Providence Hospital, where he was treated for cuts on his head. "Then I hit it with my pole to try and get it off me."

Light realizes he was lucky to have had ski poles with him. Friday night's victim, a 17-year-old high-school student, was snowboarding and had no weapon with which to defend himself.

The other boy attacked Saturday, just minutes after Light went for first aid, was not injured.

Both boys were wearing neon-green hats, Light said.

Providence physician John Hanley, who dressed Light's wounds, said he treated a middle-aged woman for similar injuries about a month ago. She had been cross-country skiing in the Hilltop area and didn't know what hit her, Hanley said.

"Those are just two attacks that I've taken care of personally," he said.

Another victim, a wildlife biologist, said he thinks the bird is probably a great-horned owl trying to defend its territory. He dubbed the bird "one owl gone bad."

Light's father said his son handled himself as well as could be expected.

"It sounds like it was a fairly traumatic thing for him, but he took it well and I guess he bent his ski pole pretty good," said John Light.

Anchorage's last notorious owl attack was in 1989. An owl jumped a skier, taking his hat, jacket, vest and turtleneck shirt before letting him go, naked from the waist up, in below-zero weather.