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Can you emu? The Bird is the WordBy Rick Horowitz
emu (n.) 1. a large, flightless bird resembling the ostrich, commonly found in Australia and crossword puzzles, not commonly found at the Burger King drive-through in Palmyra, Wis. 2. a high-speed, low-altitude, hard-to-capture summer sensation. 3. a totally new experience for a local police chief -- and his horses.
When she first saw the thing running around the ballfield behind Palmyra-Eagle Middle School, the girls' softball coach figured something was up.
"Right away," said Carolynn Loveless, "we knew this was no sandhill crane." That's why she's the coach; she's on top of things.
This was absolutely no sandhill crane. This was, in fact, an emu, a bird that has as much business showing up on a ballfield in a small town in southeastern Wisconsin (or even a large town in southeastern Wisconsin) as it has taking tea with Queen Elizabeth. And the question, when this oversized visitor appeared out of nowhere just the other day, all five-foot-tall and 70 pounds of it, was, "Why?" And the other question was, "Now what?"
Carolynn Loveless tried to answer the other question. She called the police, who soon arrived, which is exactly what you want police to do when there's an emu on the loose. Except that as soon as they arrived, the emu took off. Took off for --
We interrupt this dramatic tale to say, "See?" You're sitting there thinking that nothing exciting ever happens where you live, that you're destined to live out your days (or at least your summer days) in a yawning swamp of utter boredom. I'm here to tell you to cheer up; if Palmyra can have an authentic emu zipping around town, then there's hope for you wherever you are, OK? OK. Now back to "True Stories of the Emu Patrol," already in progress.
-- the Burger King.
"It ran right through our drive-through," the Burger King manager told the newspaper. (Don't you just hate it when an emu cuts in front of you at the drive-through?) She was going to offer it some buns, she said, and then try to capture the beast. "But it just bolted." Emus are funny that way.
The bird ran past Maney Motors, the newspaper reported, where presumably nobody offered it buns or a test drive or anything else. And after that? "The emu then headed east on Highway 59."
This is not a sentence you come across very often in life. Maybe in Australia you do, but not here: "The emu then headed east on Highway 59."
Actually, that may be the single best thing about emus -- it's virtually impossible to utter a dull sentence when that sentence has the word "emu" in it. For instance: "I've never had any close-up contact with an emu before." Or: "I had to wrestle a goat once, which was very bad, but I think the emu was stronger." Or, for that matter: "Unfortunately, no one out here has emu food."
These particular sentences come from Palmyra Police Chief Scott Neubauer, whose squad cars took off in hot pursuit of their feathered fugitive. The emu, meanwhile, was...emulating down the highway at 30-odd miles an hour before it left the road and got itself tangled up in brush. The police grabbed it with a fishing net and a clothesline, loaded it into a wheelbarrow and then a pickup truck, and stored it temporarily in Neubauer's horse barn. The bird did not go quietly.
"It's extremely strong," the chief reported. "It has claws on the end of its feet and kicks like crazy. And bites."
And the regular occupants of Neubauer's horse barn? How did they feel about their strange and unexpected roommate? "The horses don't seem to be all that happy with him."
Which is why Neubauer was so very happy when the call came in the very next day from the Earles over in Whitewater, 10 miles away.
"The wife said, 'That's got to be our emu. It escaped two weeks ago.'" Emu and emu owners were quickly reunited; the husband had wondered whether he'd ever see the emu again.
"I was surprised to hear where it ended up," he said. "You never know with wild things."
The emu wasn't talking.
Posted 7/30/99. For the best in satire and offbeat commentary, make Rick's your pet Web site!
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Rick Horowitz