A viral Boulder owl moment, 10 years later

• The tiny jaywalking offender was a fledgling northern saw-whet owl, which the deputies photographed and filmed.

Causing a hoot: Carrie Haverfield had just started as the department's first dedicated public information officer when the images came across her desk.

• "It felt like pure luck that this gem of a story landed in my lap so early in the job," Haverfield told Axios Boulder.

Bird is the word: Thanks in part to a viral tweet that mistook Nederland for the Netherlands, the owl went viral.

• The creature broke the internet, figuratively and literally: The sheriff's office eventually had to take the video off its site because traffic crashed the servers.
• The YouTube video of the owl has 8 million views as of Wednesday.
• "To this day, I haven't been able to match the level of interaction that post received," Haverfield said. "It truly was a once-in-a-lifetime moment on social media."