Before I go any farther I’ll start by assuring you that emus are fine and they’re happily back in their pen. 

At about 8:45 I get a call from Frank - “Is Jared there?  The emus are out.”  Me, “Crap, I’ll get him…”

I yell for Jared and we both bundle up quickly and head outside…of course I grabbed my camera. We’re walking over to the emu pen area and Diane is organizing the pumpkin area – we quietly tell her the emus are out. Diane and I get the dogs into the shed so they won’t scare the emus. If you remember reading my earlier emu post, emus can sprint up to 30mph so we didn’t want to cause that to happen… Mac never went too far from the pen and it was fairly easy to lure him back in – a little food will do just the trick.Tosh turned out to be a bit more work.  She headed over to where the underground building used to be and decided to do a little grazing.  Luckily for us our Emu Whisperer (EW), aka Frank, was on the top of his game.  He grabbed to sticks to emulate longer arms.  If you can be taller than the bird they feel that you are dominating them and will sort of go where you direct them.

    If you listen close at the end of the video you can also hear that EW (Frank) is real good at calmly talking to Tosh and gets him to go the direction he wants. Once we got Tosh fairly close to the pen the whole venture slowed down – she didn’t really want to go back. So, taking his dad’s advice, Jared got behind her and wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug and carried her over.  Of course – I barely got this shot, let alone a picture at all.   Jared said she wasn’t heavy – just boney and awkward to carry.   Soon, we had both of the emus safely back into their pen and the door securely shut. 

Just another day at the orchard…