Chainsaw art is an ode to Scooter

Ted Boesch was smoking a brisket at the Whidbey Island Golf Club’s annual party when a man he had never met before asked him if he could make a chainsaw carving of an owl named Scooter.

Jim Latham wanted to know if Boesch had seen an article in the News-Times about how he and his wife rescued the owl. He proposed that Boesch memorialize the event in wood by creating a chainsaw sculpture of the bird. Boesch, who had taken up the hobby a couple of years earlier, gladly agreed.

Boesch said he likes to carve animals, especially those that are native to Whidbey Island.

“I’m a big fan of the owl, so it was meant to be,” he said.

Boesch, a Navy veteran, said his uniquely loud artistic endeavor was inspired by his desire to buy a carved bear for his property. When he discovered how expensive they were, he decided to try making his own. The bear turned out to be too advanced, so he carved a woodpecker instead.

“As I was carving, the woodpeckers that are on our property were in hand’s reach of me running a chainsaw and watching what I was doing,” he said.

Since then, he has carved an eagle holding a fish, a pod of orcas and a turtle for a nonprofit in Montana.

“I have no idea … why I’m good at this,” he said. “For some reason my brains and my hands seem to work really good with a chainsaw in it.”

He said it is absolutely, without a doubt, a dangerous art form. He religiously wears safety gear, which he learned the importance of when he was a machinist in the Navy. Boesch has had no injuries but he did destroy one of his favorite watches when a piece of wood hit it.

“To me, it’s worth it,” he said. “It’s just part of doing this because I really found a passion and I really want to do this for a long time.”

His home on North Whidbey is surrounded by old-growth forest. When a tree falls down on any of his neighbors’ land, Boesch volunteers to haul the tree away so he can keep the wood.

“I’m helping the neighborhood but they’re also helping me,” he said. “It’s just been wonderful because I have zero overhead for all this material.”

Boesch is now determined to make his hobby his “retirement job.” He wants to stay local and carve for people and businesses on the island. He also has a YouTube channel called Weetzer’s Woodshop. The channel features a video of Boesch surprising Linda with the wooden owl.

The sculpture stands about five and a half feet tall. Hand engraved on the front is the name “Scooter” and the day that he was released – March 4, 2022.

“I’m so impressed that he did this,” Linda said. “And they sneaked all this in on me. I had no idea.”

She discovered the real owl on her property in December of 2021. At first, she thought Scooter was just a rock in the snow and walked by it twice before she decided to investigate.

“That’s when he turned his head and looked at me,” she recalled. She had never been that close to a wild animal before and while she was a little scared, she knew that he needed her help.

Linda thinks he was trying to catch some prey and the animal fought back and got away. Scooter had no broken bones but he had soft tissue injuries in his legs and was unable to stand upright or fly away.

“I’ve got no kids,” she said. “I have maternal instincts that are frustrated, maybe, and I thought ‘okay, this is my baby. I’m taking care of him.’”

They transported Scooter to Wolf Hollow, an animal rehabilitation center on San Juan Island. Scooter was put on a feeding tube and remained in the center’s care for over two months, steadily graduating to larger cages and regaining the ability to kill and eat mice.

Scooter was transported back to the Lathams’ home to be released. The couple hasn’t seen him since, but now they have a life-size sculpture to remember him by.

Photo by Rachel Rosen Ted Boesch carved a sculpture of Scooter, the owl that Jim and Linda Latham saved when they found him injured on their property.