Hard to believe my eyes

[Pyrate Jim]

Out here in Western Virginia on an 80 acre tree farm backed up to the G.W. Nat'l Forest.
My Sister and I with two of her kids just spent half an hour chasing an Emu through the woods.
I think they are native to Australia ~ what the hell it's doing in our backyard is a mystery to me.

Sister called me saying she thought there was a dog near the geese pen. I went out and looked and see a bear loping toward me on the road about 200 yards out.
I go back and grab a shotgun, (not to shoot the bear, I don't want to piss him off) just to try and scare it away.
I get back out and there's something following the bear, same place coming up the road and no sign of the bear. At first I could see it walked on two legs like a bird and we do see turkeys out here, but realized this thing was too big - like over four feet high at the head.

We had cameras and tried to get pics, I'll snag my sisters memory card and try to get them on here to show.
Just blew my mind and had to share.

[Junglepeanut]

Lol, my father in law lives on 60+ acres in Southern California. He had two Emus in a pen as pets. They broke out one day and disappeared. I am sure there were some freaked out Californians thinking they smoked some bad weed and were hallucinating when those things would run by

[Carp]

Or some other mind expAnding supplements...🤔

[JonM]

There's an emu running around my area in PA as well. It got loose some time last year and it's been spotted here & there ever since. We were surprised it survived the winter out here, but it seems to be thriving.

[bored383]

plenty of emu and ostrich farms near me here in sandy eggo . . . maybe someone out there had some escape from one of their farms

weirdest animal spot out there I've heard of was a wild peacock in west virginia. was an escaped pet

[Carp]

Pretty sure, there's an Alpaca and/or Llama, Something Farm/Ranch, about a 1/4 mile from my current location. I hear also, there are a few "Carp" sightings... ever so often, around these parts.

[KMDPB]

Plot twist, it wasn't an emu it was bigfoot...

[lew]

My neighborhood's got chickens, goats, cattle, horses, camels, emus, and a few others. Emus are cool as crap. Pretty easy to see their dinosaur lineage in them.

You had a shotgun in-hand. Shoulda blasted it, saved the feathers, and had one great barby.

[Marauder_Pilot]

Where I grew up in Ontario, there was an urban legend about a wild flock of, depending on who you asked, either emus or ostriches that roamed around the fields and forests locally like deer after a flock escaped from a local farm.

No idea if it was true or not, but honestly I could see it. The county was mostly farmland and forest, and I'm assuming those birds eat roughly the same things as deer and there's a fuckload of deer around, and basically no predators left beyond coyotes. I could easily see the same thing happening elsewhere.

[Chappy]

Keep a healthy distance, they can be very dangerous.

[snaparen]

I hear they are very tasty!

[Chappy]

I dunno, we just bleed them. But sometimes they bleed our techs right back.

[Jonnydread]

There's a few emu farms around the Northeast, good eatin'

[Fubarius]

Back around 2000 or so I was playing in a small scenario game at a field in central Illinois. I'm in the staging area reloading and I see a player from the other team limp off the field, mumbling something about a "Big effing bird". Turn out he was crawling through the brush trying to get a good position when he suddenly felt what seemed like a hit to his butt. He turned around to see what hit him and was face to face with a rather large and confused Emu.

The player screamed.

The Emu squawked (or whatever noise an Emu makes).

The player limped/ran back to the staging area.

The Emu ran back to the neighboring farm it had escaped from.

[infamoussmiley]

LOL

[lew]

Where I grew up in Ontario, there was an urban legend about a wild flock of, depending on who you asked, either emus or ostriches that roamed around the fields and forests locally like deer after a flock escaped from a local farm.

No idea if it was true or not, but honestly I could see it. The county was mostly farmland and forest, and I'm assuming those birds eat roughly the same things as deer and there's a fuckload of deer around, and basically no predators left beyond coyotes. I could easily see the same thing happening elsewhere.

Fun fact: Ostriches typically form stronger bonds with humans than they do with their fellow ostriches

A kick from a ratite is serious business.

[chrislognshot]

this thread is worthless with pictures

[oldschool]

Maybe Limu got tired of working for Liberty Mutual and, ahem, flew the coup..

[bellicose]

If I had land, I'd have emu.

There is a hill near where my in laws used to live in KC, MO called monkey mountain. Apparently, a circus train derailed long ago, and a troop of monkeys escaped and lived on that forested hill (up until the Missouri winter). That would have been a sight.