jmgoyder

Our three (now adult) emus – ‘the Emerys’ – are very tame, however their natural curiosity and wanderlust means that we keep them in a big yard of their own. Many blogposts ago, I described how we lost them for a few days because they wandered onto an adjacent farm. So now, when we let them out of their yard, we don’t let them out of our sight.

It’s not an unusual request for me to ask Son to take the Emerys for a walk. He does so rather reluctantly but he is much better than I am at herding them back into their yard after they have eaten all the roses.

In about three weeks I will get my emu chicks. I have decided to get two and this time I am getting them newly hatched so that the imprinting thing will happen and they won’t wander off as our three adult emus like to do. Here are some photos from the internet:

Instead of calling the new ones ‘Emery’ I am going to give them different names. Any ideas?

Here are two of the Emerys we lost to that rotten fox:

And (yes I know I’ve put this picture up before), my very first Emery, also killed by that fox.

For those of you who don’t know the emu back-story, here it is in brief. We got our first little emu as a chick and he bonded with the other babies – ducks, geese and turkeys, and with me. I named him Emery. I bought him from a hobby farmer who said all of Emery’s brothers and sisters had been bought and he was lonely.

I subsequently bought a couple more emu chicks from another hobby farmer, so we had three little Emerys. But, as they were, like all of the other birds, free-ranging, I lost all three to a fox in one afternoon, when they wandered off into a back paddock. It’s difficult to describe the horror I felt at the time.

Fast forward a bit: I then found a proper emu farmer who was willing to bring me six adolescent emus and, yes, I named them all ‘Emery’. It took me awhile to tame them, and we have lost three – one on arrival, one to digestive problems and another to paralysis (again, all of this was horrifying for me), but the remaining three are wonderfully happy and settled.

Several of my previous posts include various emu stories and other pictures, but the exciting news now is that, because the proper emu farmer ‘owes’ me a chick, I will soon be getting another baby Emery and this time I will be much more careful.

Due to the interest shown in doudou’s bird sculptures I herewith copy/paste a more direct link to her site http://doudoubirds.com/

I have never met doudou in person, so have only gotten to know her via the blogosphere but, ever since she made these emus for me, I have followed her work and her blog. Sorry, doudou, if you didn’t want the attention!

I think you can see from the pictures of my very first emu (Emery, who got killed by a fox, which devastated all of us), that doudou’s sculptures do a pretty good job of replicating the real thing.

I’ve just counted it up – the emus were gone for seven days – a whole week! Well, we now know they weren’t exactly gone and they were just in the next door paddock but wow! You have to realize that these paddocks are huge and the emus are still relatively small at one year of age. Also they blend in and, from a distance, look like tree stumps or branches. Or perhaps I need glasses!

Jenny, the farmer who owns the paddock, and I, had a big laugh on the phone about why they would prefer her paddock to ours, and Terry’s wife, Kaye, quoted the old saying, ‘the grass is always greener’, but what I find most interesting is that, instead of running for the hills, the emus stuck around.

It’s such a strange feeling to have actually let them go, in my heart and head, and now they’re back. For days, I comforted myself by imagining that they were frolicking in the forests, drinking from the streams, making friends with wild emus, and I actually accepted they were probably better off. Now I realize they didn’t want to go. The paddock they were in was on the corner of two roads and very easy to get out of (much easier than getting back into our paddock – go figure!)

With only three Emerys left (and the death of the fourth haunts me), the happy ending is a little tainted, however it is a beautiful thing to have them back. Once back in their yard, they went straight to the water trough and then to the bowl of wheat, then looked at me, and my container of cabbage, with glee!

This one is much more interested in my ring than the cabbage (they love anything shiny).

My beautiful Emerys! I will take them for a SHORT walk later today.

Maybe!