The Time I Put an Emu in My Car
The full story
The full story requested by those who follow my social platforms.
Starring Willoughby Lucille, and Jamison (Jamie) Alexander.
This morning started like an average morning, waking up early to make sure the tooth fairy came to visit my middle kiddle, but I decided to check my phone and just sort of lay about for a minute.
Until a text came through.
Are your emus out by chance?
Now, I get these texts a lot, because my very dear loving group of local friends sees any large bird on any site and immediately tags me with, “Is this yours?” (No, that’s a rhea, but I’ll go get it 😂), so I confidently replied to this text, I don’t think so imma go look.
I popped out the back door… not a single Jurassic Park bird in sight. Colorful words began, potato shoes located, keys acquired, out the door with a phone on 2% and fear enough to power all of Monsters Inc.
I called my friend and said, WHERE WERE THE BIRDS?”
This man may as well have given me exact coordinates. Down your road toward the highway second brick house on the right there’s a bunch of people petting them!
This man rehearsed those directions. He knew those were my birds. He knew.
Off I went.
And sure enough, there was a pile of women and my two arrogant velociraptors getting petted and loved on from the other side of a fence, because somehow they got into a cow pasture!
The lady said, I woke up this morning and just knew my husband surprised me with ostriches! But when he said no I knew they were yours, and you’d come for them.
I was like … were you… were you gonna kidnap my Sesame Street distant cousins? I don’t even blame you, I wouldn’t give back these tall things either.
She says she will hold them there while I go get a whatever I need to get them home, and I’m like thanks so much!
It was that moment, I realized, I am standing in this woman’s yard … in shorts that hardly qualify as shorts, and an old tee shirt that doesn’t cover all the things it should. Not only does she have these great grand dinosaurs of mine, she’s now seen some cheeks. Two sets. Of mine.
Bless her.
Anyway I race home, and I’m like I don’t even know what to grab to accomplish what’s coming.
Two bags of classic lays, a dog leash, and more acceptable shorts, and because I have no smaller bills, the tooth fairy slips the kiddle an entire $20. Now I’m poor, and my birds are gone.
Zero game plan. Just winging it to retrieve said wingless birds with toothpicks for legs. Wingless birds that I’m willing to trade for a crisp high five and a bale of hay at this rate.
I park at the entrance to the pasture, walk in with a bag of chips, and both birds spot me and come be-bopping over like they aren’t vigilantes. Hey mom sup! I go to slip a leash fit enough for a guinea pig over Willow’s neck, and she’s like WHOA, JUKED YA and takes off running the other way.
31mph. That’s how fast emus can run. Just so y’all know. Did she get that fast? Idk, I don’t keep a speedometer in my pants, but if I had to make an educated guess, she was going around 197mph.
At this point, Willow is inside the pasture and Jamie has found his way out, which means Jamie could get to the road, but Willow is moderately safe. So I go toward Jamie.
I’m trying to lure him with a bag of chips, and idk if he found like a rock of crack somewhere in that pasture but this oversized single-brain-cell operating bird goes full-blown Florida man every time I get near him. He takes off running in the road. I immediately start crying because like, damn bro why are you psychotic? But I hear a car coming, so I stand in the road to stop them from, you know, breaking their car and my bird.
Now, thankfully, it’s my sweet neighbor. She puts it in park, watches Jamie show me his best impressions of professional football player combined with whacky inflatable arm man, which he is 10/10 at, and gets out and asks what she can do.
And I’m like, girl don’t ask me, I’m clearly not in charge here. Like thank you so much, but I prefer someone else take over.
And what happens? Jamie goes right to her! Like you little green-bean- brained traitor.
So I snatch him up, get a leash on him, and walk him to the car. When I get to the car, after walking through every darn weed and collecting every thorn directly into my shins, who’s at the car waiting for us?
Willoughby. Oooooole Willow.
I don’t want to walk both giant birds back to the house on foot, because I know I couldn’t make it with both. Willow was starting to wander off again, so in a panic….
I shove Jamie in the back seat and shut the door.
Whewwww, when I say that plan was not thought through. The car is running, the AC on, like he is totally fine right? I even crack a window for my little nemesis.
Baby daddy calls me. “Do you need help? You’ve usually got it by now” and I am like I don’t know what I need!
Next thing I know, a giant white truck is flying past me, whips into the yard, and I watch , mouth agape, as this man leaps over a ditch, removes his hat midair, gets the hat over the emu’s eyes, and has her on the ground in like a full single swoop mortal kombat move, the kind that might include murder birds fatality.
I’m like “😯”
He has her down, I grab a sock and slip it over her face to calm her down (can’t see, can’t panic, so I read) and he’s like grab a strap, we gonna tie her legs and get her in the back seat!
I grab a strap, tie it, and I’ll be damned if Willow doesn’t look right at me, through the sock, and steps directly out of it.
I ain’t no hog tie champ, I never claimed to be. But I could probably take a class.
So he gets her back on the ground, I drop the tail gate, he picks her up, and just rolls himself into the bed of the truck bear hugging this clever girl and says drive.
Aye, aye captain.
I drive. Past my car.
Past my car containing a rabid raccoon disguised as an emu. Little do I know what is awaiting my return.
We get to my farm, get Willow into the backyard and see that she‘s’ laid his pants open, and about a 10-inch cut across his entire thigh.
But, back to the remaining cocaine bear we go.
We get back to my car.
I notice my rearview mirror is sideways, and the entire car looks like a smoky cloud.
I go to open the door, it’s locked.
I just stare in disbelief, because how?
I reach in the back window to open that door, and he has the audacity to bite me! You expensive little….
Whatever. I open the driver door. There’s pringles crushed everywhere. A cloud of smoke that can only be from the giant sack of diatomaceous earth in the third row. There’s pine shavings from where he must’ve put a hole in the bag. All of the things that were hanging from my rearview are all over the floorboard, and my moms tiny amethyst with some of her ashes in it (that I just got last month!) has separated and spilled.
So there’s my mom, mixed with a cloud of pesticide. Fantastic.
I get in anyway.
Crumbs lodged into the skin of my thighs, and I’m taking this street rat back home.
Except my car won’t go, because it’s off and I’m like, of course it is.
I start the car, and at FULL volume we are listening to some kind of political talk show. Immediately annoyed.
I fly home, drop him off in the backyard, and sit at the gate like, wow, this was very un-fun.
Anyway. Cleaned up the old man’s leg, he went off to work.
And that’s the story of why an emu was in my car.
Very cute, very stressful.
Here’s a handful of photos to support this story. Very few. Phone passed away. Bonus photo from my neighbor as I was trying to lure the birdilante with chips.
Photo of wounded leg as well. Hope you aren’t squeamish. And a photo of his uniform pants that no one is gonna believe how they got thrashed open by Little Foot’s long-lost friend.
All images by author
