Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
Ever needed to hear about mad dad birds with enormous feet? Try THESE on for size:
What’s that you say? These are clearly the feet of a dinosaur, not a bird? WHY NOT BOTH?
This is Australia’s very own dinosaur, the second-largest bird in the world, the emu. Say hi!
They roam around Australia making ‘wonk-wonk’ noises under their breath and glaring at everything. And the dads take care of the babies! They sit on the eggs…
They look after the tiny stripey adorable things….
They look after the less tiny less adorable things…
And they even look after the great big menacing things that are almost as big as they are.
But here’s the catch. All emus look pretty much alike. Especially when you are a tiny stripey adorable thing. All you can see of your dad is is great big dinosaur feet (see picture #1). So there is one very unrealistic thing about all the adorable terrifying dinosaur family photos above:
I have never seen an emu family in the wild where all the babies are the same size.
Here is the reason!
Emu dad and his emu babies are roaming about wonking and glaring at everyone. Suddenly emu dad sees another emu dad! A threat!
Emu dads do some display threats with dancing and bouncing and fluffing and… look, it’s very serious business, okay?
If this does not work to see off one emu they might progress to actual fighting.
Oops, sorry, you wanted the dignified version. Here, have some ART:
MAGNIFICENT.
Either way, this encounter will end up with one or both adult emus zooming away as fast as he can run. This is very fast.
This is the other thing they do besides wonking and glaring, by the way. They run. Fear the running emu.
Anyway, this leaves all the tiny and medium-sized and semi-large stripey things milling around making confused tiny “cheep? wonk?” noises and basically just following whichever pair of large feet they can find.
HI DAD
And so mostly when you see a male emu with a gaggle of youngsters at heel, they are all different sizes. Who knows whose they are? Not him! But he’s going to look after them anyway.
Fear him.
Well this is awkward
I’ve done a lot of volunteer work on scientific research in emu’s! Which involved measuring lots of emu eggs from under nesting males.
The females make this really low booming noise in order to attract a mate that sounds like two empty plastic bottles being hit together and the males will hiss at you if you get to close. But they’re massive cowards and if you step towards them with your hand in the air they get scared and run off (as you can see from this photo i managed to get of a male getting spooked by us when we stepped towards him).
Here is the first tweet of the saga! From tumblr acct @foxfeather who runs a farm and bird rescue in Minnesota! She is amazing! Go to her acct for baby vulture pics! She also has a mostly grown vulture and a kestrel named Stormfly!
@gallusrostromegalus you seem fairly likely to know if there’s any big bird farms along the Poudre?
MOTHERFUCKER
I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT FUCKING HOUSE THAT EMU CAME FROM.
I THINK I KNOW THAT EXACT BIRD.
Hang on, I’m gonna leave Animal Control a message if they haven’t rounded it up yet and then I’ll explain.
OK north of Foco there’s a large system of resivors around the Poudre River, and my parents live in a neighborhood around one. On the other side of the resivor, there’s a guy who keeps “Pet” Emus. Now, his property backs up to the water, and Emus are not keen on swimming so as long as the water levels stayed high, the birds would stay in their yard.
Except.
It’s a RESIVOR.
THAT THING THEY DRAIN WATER OUT OF.
So for a few years there every late summer the city would draw down the water, and the Emus would go “ooh! beach!” and they would go have an amble around the beach and peek in the neighbor’s windows and generally terrorize everyone who was not ready to have a 6’ dinosaur in thier vicinity.
I know this because when I was still living with my parents, My Dog and I were stalked by one for the better part of a week before they caught him.
So, apparently emus don’t live much over a decade, and this was about 15 years ago now, so it’s probably not the same bird but likely one of his offspring, but one morning I woke up from a weird scratching and bonking noise outside my bedroom window, thought the squirrels were having particularly Robust Intercourse outside, and rolled over to see an Emu looking in my window.
My bedroom was on the second floor.
Now, part of the roof is less than three feet from the ground which is how I guess he got up there, but now he couldn’t work out how to get back down, and had taken to pecking at random bits of roof and window in hopes a solution might present itself. The dog we had at the time was Cody, a 90lb German Shepherd with a personality made entirely of Mashmallow Fluff. He was the sweetest of boys. Ceritifed Therapy Dog. Scared of Mice. Slept on my feet every night.
I recall rolling over, seeing the bird, thinking ‘Man, I really hope this is one of those really vivid dreams because this would suck in real life’ rolling back over, and seeing Cody on my other side, attempting to hide behind me, crying.
“Aw fuck.”
So I go wake up my parents in the next room.
“Hey mom. There’s an emu on the roof.”
“…What?’
I pointed out the window in my parents room, where the Emu had helpfully followed me. Mom sat up, looked at the Emu, rolled over and asked Dad what the number for animal control was.
It took them
THREE HOURS
to get the Emu off the roof and Honestly I Do Not Blame The Bird, becuase that’s a long way to the ground when you are six feet tall and have a brain the size of a peanut, and all Animal Control sent over was two High School Interns with Brooms. Eventually, he more or less fell off the short end, and immediately did a runner out of the yard and down the street, presumably homeward bound.
The next morning, I wake up.
Guess what is outside.
This time, Mom decides she’s perfectly capable of hitting things with a broom until they fall off the roof by herself, and the emu is sent sprinting away in much shorter order.
Day after that he’s not on the roof but instead in the garage. On top of the car. Stop Climbing things. We name him Jerry, because he feels like a Jerry.
He does not return the day after that.
Foolishly, we are relieved
NEXT MORNING, JERRY IS KICKING AT THE BACK DOOR, INDICATING HE WANTS TO BE LET IN.
Cody is in hysterics. He is a gentle creature, full of love, and desn’t like it when there are mice in the house, or the rabbits fight in the yard. This massive, home-invading dinosaur is too much for him. Measures must be taken.
The Neighborhood website has been abuzz with Jerry sightings, and by now everyone knows to which address he must be returned. Also, that the guy has not put up a fence and jerry will be back again tomorrow.
Jerry is currently in the back yard. I am tasked with preventing Cody from having a total nervous breakdown while my parents chase him around the yard with brooms and a rake, until they herd him into the back of the minivan. Mom comes out with a bowl of peas (google indicated it was ok as a treat) and a piece of paper.
YOUR BIRD WILL BE RETURNED WHEN YOU POST PROOF OF A REAR FENCE
it read, in 72-point font, and she propped it in front of him where he sat, Dad taking pics while mom tossed him peas until they got one where he looked suitably bewildered, and posted it anonymously to the neighborhood website.
I assume he started building the fence when Jerry first went missing, but part of me also believes he installed a 10-high (to account for water level changes and the slope of his yard) 300ft long chain-link fence in less than three hours while Mom drove Jerry around to every vet clinic in the city to see if SOMEONE would hang onto him. I was tasked with sitting in the passenger seat with a broom and making sure Jerry stayed in the back. Which he did, actually. he sat very politely and looked out the windows the whole time, having a grand adventure.
He was returned to the house and the owner given an extremely loud and public lecture in the front yard about the responsibilities of animal husbandry and How Resivors Work.
I can only assume that the fense has fallen down and that the Son Of Jerry is having an even grander adventure.
This video was taken on 9/26/21 in the McMurry Natural Area for those of you in FoCo, so until we can confirm capture, stay out of the area, esp if you have dogs. Emus can kick hard enough to kill humans and animals.
