Emma Emu

I never thought much at all about Emus. They were odd birds that lived in Australia. What else was there to know?

That is, until my neighbor, Joe, called me one morning and asked if I wanted an Emu. Knowing my friend, I assumed it would be a gift ofgiant drumsticks, Emu steaks deep fried in fat, or would be another of his jokes. This time, he assured me that there was an Emu at his back fence in a corner and that it had been hiding out there for two days. He had called around but no one was missing an Emu. Someone had seen it walking down one of the dirt roads about a week before, but that's all.

"Sure, Joe, why not?" I replied, being a pushover for any homeless creature.

Making a long story shorter, I opened the back gate and Joe and his helpers herded Emma through the gate to our place. We had unceremoniously become Emu owners.

Tinkerbell, the miniature donkey we called "Tink", joined in the excitement and welcomed the strange new resident within minutes and they walked off through the woods together. Side-by-side, best friends. Simple as that!

The first worry was: what to feed the Emu? The best answer we could find during a Web search was: "whatever it will eat." There were acres of frogs, lizards, snakes, snails, small plants, leaves, grass and available forage. Emu was a browser, so we didn't worry too much.

A few days later, Emu (the temporary name since we could not tell male from female) and Tink showed up near the gate where we fed Tink occasional corn tossed about for her. Emu was pecking up corn kernels!

Okay, then, she likes corn! I began putting out more, just for her. She ate a lot of it. A lot!

Through the winter, she ate corn and creepy-crawly things I didn't need to know about. I made a small feeder for her and put it high enough on a fence post that the goats could not get her food, and began putting a pint of corn in it. She ate that in no time at all, so I increased it to two pints.

Because there were no berries about during the winter, after a few weeks we added some grapes from the grocery. She loves grapes! She ate the grapes and then the corn. By then she easily weighed more than I do and she had an endless capacity for eating grapes and we limited her supply to ten at breakfast and ten in the evening, along with the two pints of corn.

Then we added a chopped apple. She ate the grapes, the apple, and then the corn. She also ate most of the corn I tossed around for the goats and the deer. If she got there first, she ate all of it. That resulted in an increase in corn distribution to ensure everyone got enough.

Emu arrives at the side gate for her morning meal as soon as it is daylight. She spends her day walking and pecking at fixed and moving edibles, most often “thumping” to herself.

She began making deep thumping sounds in her breast and we learned that is what females do, so we named her Emma. The designation proved correct when she laid eleven very large eggs in a rough nest she made in a thicket. Tink had smashed five of them by walking on the nest. I rescued the others, drilled small holes in the ends, sucked out the contents with my Shop Vac, and sold them on the Internet to a couple in West Virginia who used them to carve intricate patterns in the hard shells.

Baby Emus would have been fun to have but there has to be a practical limit on the apples and grapes we buy.

Emma is as tall as I am - six feet. She stands and stares at me with big, amber-colored eyes but there doesn't seem to be much inside other than big bird instinct.

Tink left to join a few other donkeys on a horse farm so she could have donkey friends. Emma continued her routine as if nothing had changed. Her purpose in life is to be an Emu and she focuses on that.

Sometimes, being yourself is enough.

Comments are always appreciated.

Will