By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Last Friday's hailstorm in Pawnee County wreaked havoc on vehicles and homes in Larned and beyond. For smaller wildlife, the baseball-sized hail was sometimes a matter of life and death. Lifelong Larned resident Tyrel Garcia and his family enjoy watching the wildlife and recently installed a bird feeder with a camera. That camera caught Garcia's small act of heroism to save a young bird.
"I was just out on the front porch watching the storm come in," he said. "The hail came in rapidly, so I'm sure the animals probably didn't have time to take cover. I saw a Mississippi Kite flying through the air and it got hit by a large hailstone and just dropped and flapped there a little bit."
Garcia ran back into the house to grab a towel so he could rescue the bird, even as dangerous hail still fell. He also had to contend with falling limbs in the 50-plus mile-an-hour winds.
"The hail was at least golf-ball sized," he said. "I saw the bird out there and knew the hail could really hurt if something wasn't done. I just went out there. I put a hoodie on for a little bit of protection. I couldn't let it just get hit."
Garcia took the injured bird to the Raptor Rehabilitation Center at the Brit Spaugh Zoo in Great Bend where it was treated for a minor injury. Garcia submitted his bird camera footage to KSN in Wichita to document the storm. They turned it into a brief feature about his rescue.
The Garcias, on the west side of Larned, escaped some of the more severe damage. The hail punched holes in the siding of the home, and the house will get a new roof for the second time in two years. The Garcia's vehicles also suffered light damage.