A wayward emu is on the loose in northwestern Harrison County after spooking a rancher’s livestock for the past couple of weeks. Brad Martin said his son and nephew were heading to the family fishing hole on a recent day when they spotted the unwelcome guest.
“They came running up to the house, yelling, ‘Daddy, there’s a prehistoric animal at the pond!’ ” Martin said.
When Martin investigated, he said he found an emu, a shaggy, flightless bird of Australian origin. Emus were the objects of a late 1980s farming fad that faded in the 1990s. The birds are none too bright, he added.
“It was real gentle, just dumb as a rock, though,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe how dumb they are. The gate was open, and he’d just run back and forth. The dogs would get after him, and he wouldn’t take off down the pasture to get away from them. He’d jump up and down and do all kinds of crazy stuff.”
Martin could not find the owner. He thought about giving away the emu, but he didn’t have a trailer to transport it, and even if he did, he said he wouldn’t have known how to load the estimated 7-foot-tall bird.
Meanwhile, the emu was “rampaging” on his property.
“It wasn’t afraid of nothing,” Martin said. “It was just scaring the horses and the cows and dogs to death because they’re not used to nothing like that. It would get out there beside the fence and run up and down the fence. The cows wouldn’t eat, the horses wouldn’t eat, the dogs kept barking, and finally we let the gate open and let it go.”
On Sunday, Martin shooed the emu away from his property on Dehart Road east of Diana. If any neighbors come across the wandering bird, they may report it to the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office at (903) 923-4000.
Kenneth “Al” Howe, the president of the Texas Emu Association, said Martin should have alerted the emu association or animal control authorities to remove the bird. He said when the market for emu meat failed to materialize in the late 1990s, many speculators around East Texas and elsewhere released their flocks, and some are still laying eggs in the wild.
“Most that haven’t been hit by cars or killed by predators are pretty well hidden,” said Howe, of Taylor. “A lot of people who have big farms know they’ve got them, but they don’t bother them.”
An emu processing plant once operated in Longview but closed in the late 1990s, Howe said. Emu oil is still used in cosmetic and pharmaceutical products, and Howe predicts that demand will increase in the next couple of years.
In Diana, Martin said the emu had his Red Brangus cows scattering in every direction.
“Talk about fast, when it decides to go it’s going,” Martin said. “It was a pretty wild little old experience.”
Still, the rancher figures he might not have seen the last of the errant emu.
“I’m sure it’s around here somewhere,” he said. “I bet it ain’t gone too far down the line.”
Update: Emu may be close to home
A Diana woman thinks she knows the emu that’s on the lam in northwestern Harrison County.
His name is Bud. He’s 16 years old, and he’s been on his own for quite some time.
“Everybody knew my emu had gotten out, but it’s been out for six months and I just assumed it was dead,” said Anita Davis, of Diana.
An emu turned up on Brad Martin’s farm earlier this month. Martin couldn’t locate the owner, and the emu spent two weeks terrorizing his horses, cattle and dogs before Martin says he turned him loose Sunday.
If the emu is indeed Bud, Davis said, he hasn’t wandered far in the past six months. The Martin place is less than a mile from her spread.
“I just really feel like this is my emu,” she said.
Davis said Martin’s description of Bud – gentle but dumb as rocks – was pretty accurate.
“He’s tame,” she said. “He was a pet when I had him, but he got out through the gate, and we couldn’t catch him.”
Davis and her husband have one emu left, Bud’s father. At one time, the Davises owned 101 emus, but they gave almost all the others away as a market for emu meat didn’t materialize in the 1990s.
While some emu enthusiasts swear by the birds’ lean flesh, Davis said she doesn’t partake.
“If I was starving I could probably have eaten it, but I can’t eat something I’ve given a name to,” she said.
If anybody finds Bud, Davis asks they call her home number at (903) xxx-xxxx. Don’t try to catch him, she added.
“The males are very friendly, and that’s why they can pet him,” she said. However, “you have to know how to handle an emu or they can get hurt really bad.”
Since a story about the emu appeared in Friday’s newspaper, Davis said her husband has heard from other neighbors who have seen Bud.
“He may not want to come home,” she joked. “It sounds like he’s having a good time.”