A wayward emu is on the loose in Harrison County after spooking a rancher’s livestock for two weeks. Brad Martin said his son and nephew were heading to the family fishing hole on a summer afternoon 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 found an emu: a shaggy, flightless bird of Australian origin. Emus had been the objects of a 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 seven-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.”
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 their county sheriff.
Kenneth “Al” Howe, the president of the Texas Emu Association, was pretty miffed when he heard that Martin had turned out the emu. He 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 ’90s, many speculators around East Texas and elsewhere released their flocks. 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, who lives in Central Texas. “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. 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.”
The rancher figures he hasn’t 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.”
AN UPDATE
The day after the story about the emu appeared in the local newspaper, a Diana woman named Anita Davis called in. She thinks it’s her bird. 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,” she said.
If this emu is indeed Bud, he hasn’t wandered far in the past half-year. The Martin place is less than a mile from Davis’s spread.
“I just really feel like this is my emu,” she said.
According to Davis, 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 away almost all of the others when a market for emu meat didn’t materialize.
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 requests that they give her a call. 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 the newspaper story came out, 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.”
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