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How ‘Harry Potter’ Accidentally Helped Create a Real-Life Owl Crisis

Fans wanted their own Hedwig, but many underestimated the cost and care involved, leaving sanctuaries to deal with the fallout.

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Evidently, the Harry Potter movies were far more influential than many of us in the U.S. realized.

As it turns out, fans in the UK were so enamored with Harry’s pet owl, Hedwig, that they decided to get owls of their own—because how could that possibly go wrong? By the time the final film in the series was released in 2011, however, the craze appeared to die down, as did part of the country’s owl population. You see, around then, many people got sick of their little feathered friends and started getting rid of them.

In May 2012, The Mirror reported that hundreds of owls had recently been........

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