Several years ago, good friends of ours decided they'd make their fame and fortune in the emu business.

They wisely got out before things went seriously wrong with the industry, but I learned a lot about these funny birds while they were getting started. The main thing was I learned I really didn't want any part of an emu!

The oil was fine, but the meat was rubbery, and after the special fencing, handling, equipment, feedstuffs, etc, that went along with the project, I was not impressed.

Neither were some neighbors who had begun to turn their big birds loose. Against the law in Texas to allow emus to become feral, but without identification, who could tell who's emu it really was?

So, it really wasn't much of a shock when I drove home late one afternoon to find two emus hanging out at my mailbox. I drove on in the yard, pretending I didn't see them.

But it was July and getting on towards nightfall, how would they find water? How would they keep from scaring traffic right off the roadway? Which one would lure a coyote pack up even closer to our goat pens?

About that time John drove in and announced, "EMUS,, MUST GO CATCH EMUS…"

So we stalked back to the road where, sure enough, they still were dancing around in a confused pattern in our driveway. We attempted to herd them and realized we'd never manage to march them up the drive to the main entry gates.

Finally, cornering them in a fenceline "L", we looked at each other, "Now what?" I knew I had dinner to make, goats to milk, birds to feed, and didn't really want to be indecisive at this juncture.

John had one emu by the throat and it was kicking enough to break a hefty board on the fence! I held mine down by it's wing feathers, but it was shedding them rapidly, so I didn't think my hold would be for long.

We all did a 'confused dance' while we played best two out of 3 falls with the big birds. They seemed to be winning, and I'm sure the thought of that kick to the board was helping me avoid their legs. John finally grabbed one bird and started bodily carrying it, hissing and clucking, to the empty peacock run.

I tackled mine and sat on it until he could get back to carry this one, too. It made a drastic move and I rolled off it's back! (some bronc rider I turned out to be!) It leaped up and I was left with a handful of feathers.

Watching it trot off into the sunset, I wished the other one had managed to find escape also.

I'm sorry to admit I never did figure out what to do with a solitary emu. They are desperately dumb birds, or at least this one was. We fed it for several months (expensive ratite pellets, of course), and during the whole time, that bird never did figure out I was going into the pen to feed it, not murder it.

One day I went out to find it bashing itself into the cage, and the only thing inside the pen with it was a bright butterfly!

Neither John nor myself had much interest in trying to butcher a bird as large as an emu, none of the local processors would touch it, and I knew I didn't have freezer space for it anyhow. We did locate the farmstead it probably came from, only they didn't want it back, and denied ownership.

So, I am ashamed to admit I probably broke the law and made several coyotes happy when I released it into the wild again. Several weeks passed when I saw a herd of cattle look up and give chase in a field about 5 miles from our ranch. I slowed the truck to see a wild-eyed emu race toward the cows!

Surely that wasn't my emu! But, just in case that in that dim emu brain, there might lurk some remembrance, I gunned the gas to the truck and trundled on down the road, emuless and thrilled to be that way.