Typically on the soccer field you want a ball to find the back of the net, but that wasn’t the case on Saturday when firefighters were notified of an owl that had been trapped in soccer net on Saint Francis soccer fields.

IFD Station 35 arrived at 7700 S. Arlington Avenue around 4:00 p.m. to help free the bird that was caught in the goals top right corner.

Firefighters faced a two fold task of freeing the bird from the netting while also dodging pecks from the distressed owl’s beak. They would use scissors to cut pieces of the net that had surrounded it. In video posted to the IFD’s Twitter page you can see the soccer goal being moved in order to place the owl in different positions.

After roughly 15 minutes of cutting, the owl had finally been freed, though possibly still feeling frightened the video shows the owl’s claw still gripping tightly to a piece of net before flying away.

The owl narrowly avoided running into a second goal while flying away.