AURORA - Sometimes, something unexpected happens.
"All of a sudden, I got this big explosion," Earnest Taylor, Aurora resident, said. "The whole house just felt like it lifted."
Lightning tore through a tree in the front yard of Taylor's home near Zion Street and 31st Avenue in Aurora.
"Looked like the house is on fire," Memorie White, Aurora resident, said. "It was scary."
The electricity carved line from the ground to the tallest part of White and Taylor's tree. But, that was what was unexpected.
"Seems as if there was a small bird in the tree also that got, I guess, hit by lightning also," Taylor said.
About 20 feet away in the neighbors yard lay a Northern Flicker, a woodpecker. It was barely breathing with burns across half its head.
"It is kind of sad," Earnest Taylor, resident, said. "I was hoping that you guys could bring a squad over to rescue him or help the bird out."
After sending a Tweet about the situation, a viewer sent us a message regarding a nonprofit group called Wild Bird Rehab in Denver who instructed us to carefully bring the bird to their facility.
"We haven't a bird actually struck by lighting," Jessica Sondgeroth, animal caretaker, said. "This was the first one."
Sondgeroth says they are giving the woodpecker pain medication and they are working to raise its body temperature.
Unfortunately the Wild Bird Rehab center said Sunday that the flicker did not survive.
(KUSA-TV © 2014 Multimedia Holdings Corporation)
