HILARIOUS photos show how an owl “broke into” a professor’s home and refused to leave for six hours.
Philip Brown, a Professor of Housing and Communities at the University of Huddersfield, was stunned when he awoke on Tuesday morning and found the winged intruder.
The 43-year-old says he initially believed the commotion was his teenage son playing on his xbox in the early hours, but instead locked eyes with a tawny owl.
The images show the wide-eyed trespasser perched on a lamp in his living room.
Further photos show the owl flying towards a window, but failing to get out before flying to perch on top of books to rest.
Philip who is also the chairman of the UK Housing Studies Association posted to Twitter shortly after saying: “Just the regular morning when you find a Tawny Owl in your lounge”.
He added: “It is with some significant relief that I report that the owl made a break for freedom around 6 hours after first being found after trying out several perches around the gaff”.
“We assume it fell down the chimney at some point in the night? #twit #twoo”.
The post now has nearly 50,000 likes on twitter with users in hysterics over the images.
@KieFW27 wrote: “Bad case of owl play has occurred.”
Another user suggested it was the Owl who was disturbed and not the professor, @blueocean455 wrote: “The owl is like “Just a regular morning when you find a human in your lounge”.
Another user @WorldofJeffLane added: “So you got your Hogwarts letter. Great!”.
Speaking today Philip recounted his stressful encounter, saying: “I found the owl as I thought I heard cupboards being closed in the living room.
“I assumed it was my son switching his new Xbox on that he’d just got for his 15th birthday. It was about 6.30am.”
“When it happened more than once, I thought it was a bit weird as I’ve never known him shut a single cupboard door in his life.
“I opened the door and the owl was sat on the window sill and it did a 180-degree head rotation and looked right at me.”
“We stared at one another for a bit and I quietly closed the door and went and woke my wife up.
“We reached out to local wildlife rescue places and wildlife advice lines.”
“The advice from the RSPB was to allow the owl to calm down, open a window and at dusk it would fly out.
“Once it hit the wall quite hard and it fell to the floor. As it got to lunch time, we were getting increasingly worried about it.”
“I went back into the room, it had settled on the high shelves again, and opened the upper sash windows instead and as I was leaving it set off to fly again.”
“This time it flew straight out of the window.”
“In all it was in the room for at least 6 hours, likely more.
“We were just really worried about it. It was obviously distressed and we wanted to make sure it escaped unharmed.”
