Remember The Emu

Do you remember about ten years ago when someone persuaded America that Emu was the cash crop of the future?  These flightless birds were going to change the face of ranching in America. They were reported to be easy to raise and very profitable. One of the selling points was that you could use every part of the bird. And at six feet or better, there was a lot of bird to use.

While this change in the face of ranching was going on, I was working with a man that had the bug. He was going to become an Emu rancher and retire early. He was somewhat passionate about the birds, and inadvertently taught me why I should not become an Emu tycoon.

The first thing that turned me off the beasts was tales of disemboweling kicks. It seems that these birds are far from domestic and like nothing better than giving you a good reason not to come into their pen. Daily he told tales of one particular bird chasing him and generally causing havoc. (I learned later that he had hit this bird with a shovel and that it wanted revenge.)

Another reason to not get into the biz was the cost. These bastards at the time were selling for more than a good used car. I seem to remember him saying that he was getting a good deal at about $5000 a bird, and of coarse you need at least two of the flightless retards to get any good from them. You had to have incubators as well, costing more than pocket change, as well as a hatching room, and growing room, and vet bills and, well, you get the picture. There was a lot of up front expense.

As he spent more and more money, he had more and more tales to share of his learning curve. Initially he paid for a breeding pair, but after more than a year, he still had no results for his effort. It was at about this time that he learned a very important lesson about Emu. They have no overt genitalia. By this I mean that their naughty bits are hidden on the inside both in the guys and the gals. This makes telling the guys from the gals a bit challenging. (Throwing eyeliner in the pen does no good, they just eat it.)

You have to throw the creature to the ground, avoiding that kick that I mentioned earlier, and stick your fingers into it’s nether regions, feeling around for something or another that I have no desire to know more about, to tell the males from the females. After risking his life to stick his fingers into the insides of a couple of pissed off birds, he learned answer to his egg shortage.

He had two males.

Another point that he soon learned was that these birds bond. They bond to whatever is in their environment. In this case, his male bird bonded with his other male bird. That’s right, he was the proud owner of homosexual Emu, now and forever unable to make emotional connection with the fair sex.

He called his bird pusher, and they came to the agreement that the pusher would deliver two guaranteed females for a ‘special price’, this price being a large section of this man’s life savings. Of coarse he agreed, conveniently ignoring his knowledge of the fact that the birds were already bonded, and most likely would not change their sexual orientation.

But more birds meant more pens, and more pens meant more money, and the pusher had pretty much done a number on my hopelessly optimistic co-worker. Nonetheless, he coughed up the money and effort and made a lovely living space for his new livestock.

He was a lucky man. One of the birds did on fact develop a liking for girls and became a convenient heterosexual, to my co-workers glee. He still had one pair that was not getting along, and one of those birds pining for his lost love, but things were looking up. He had at least one pair bumping uglies and making eggs.

At this point, the bottom fell out of the Emu market. Is seems that a lot of people had bought the not so little devils, and not having had the difficulties that this man experienced, were now selling the results of their breeding program by the dozens. The prices dropped to just about ten percent of what they were the year before, and then dropped again. Soon people were setting their birds free just to avoid having to feed them.

I don’t really know what became of him and his birds. About this time the company decided that they did not really need my services any more and let me go. I was never really close to my former work buddy, mostly because I made fun of his raising gay birds for profit.

Several years later I saw him on the TV, trying to avoid the questions that the news-person had about why his employer was shutting down the plant. Ever the optimist, I am sure he thought if he sang the company song they would give him a job in another location.

Sucker.

I wonder if he ate the birds.