When people bring up “the Boulder County owl,” nobody’s asking “Who?” anymore.

A fluffy little owl photographed and videotaped last week staring down a Boulder County sheriff’s deputy outside Nederland has become a worldwide Internet star, with the pint-sized bird appearing all over social media and on the websites of Time,

Mashable, the U.K.’s Daily Mail and many more.

One tweet by a webmaster in India that featured the photos was retweeted more than 13,000 times — despite placing the baby owl in the Netherlands rather than Nederland.

“It’s pretty surprising and pretty impressive,” said Boulder sheriff’s Deputy Dan Walter, who photographed the owl. “But then again, who wouldn’t think that was cute?”

Walter said he and Deputy Sophie Berman were driving along Rainbow Lakes Road on July 21 when they rounded the corner and spotted something in the middle of the roadway.

“When we first saw it, we knew it was a fluffy something with eyes, but that’s all we could tell,” Walter said.

Berman managed to stop the vehicle just in time, and the unknown fluffy object disappeared from view just below the bumper. It was only when Berman backed the vehicle up that they figured out what it was.

Walter said Berman got out to take some photos and videos, and the owl didn’t back down one bit, even when Walter also got his camera and shot the now-famous photos of Berman and the owl.

“The owl was pretty pumped at that point,” Walter said. “At that point, in its mind it had already scared a car away so it was thinking, ‘I own this road.'”

Walter said some cars were coming up the road behind them, and they were worried the owl wouldn’t be able to fly away. But just as the deputies were considering bringing the owl into a wildlife sanctuary, it flew off on its own.

‘Young and dumb’

Michael Tincher, rehabilitation coordinator at the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program in Fort Collins, said the owl in the photos and video appears to be a full-sized but still fledgling northern saw-whet owl.

Tincher also said the owl’s age helps explain why it didn’t back down from the deputy.

“That’s the problem with young raptors,” Tincher said. “We affectionately refer to them as ‘young and dumb.’ They are clueless. They have no idea what threats are. We get many, many calls every spring and summer. People are convinced they are injured, cause they just stand there.”

Tincher said the behavior in the video — the head-bobbing and beak clicking — is designed to intimidate. Of course, with an 8-inch-tall owl, that’s easier said than done.

“They are trying to look big and scary, though with a northern saw-whet owl, you have to chuckle and take it with a grain of salt,” Tincher said.

Going viral

The pictures and video of the owl were posted on the Boulder County sheriff’s social media platforms Thursday, and soon enough, the clicks started piling up.

The original tweet by the sheriff’s office has had more than 4,000 favorites and 3,800 retweets, while Berman’s YouTube video of the owl has surpassed 3.5 million views.

“It just happens to be a cute, little, fuzzy animal,” Sheriff Joe Pelle said. “We had to actually take it down off our site because it was crashing our servers.”

Pelle said the appearance of the owl was timely, because the department has just ramped up its social media presence in order to get information out to the community out more efficiently.

“It’s interesting that we have recently begun to use social media a great deal to share information,” Pelle said. “That’s the way communities organize these days. They don’t have Tuesday night neighborhood watch meetings anymore.”

So while the department’s most popular post so far has had less to do with public safety than pint-sized cuteness, Pelle said at least people are now aware of the department’s social media accounts.

“It may raise awareness of the fact that we are using social media, so that’s a good thing,” Pelle said. “We want to be modern in our approach to the way we communicate with people.”

In fact, just days before the owl went viral, the department used social media to promote several deputies appearing in a National Geographic reality show, “Rocky Mountain Law.”

Walters himself appeared on the TV program, but pointed out that the owl still has received more exposure. But the deputy said he doesn’t mind his feathery friend taking the spotlight.

“It’s nice to have something positive in the news,” Walter said.

Mitchell Byars: 303-473-1329, byarsm@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/mitchellbyars