Illegal alien Emu's on loose in NH

[Pat K]

Illegal alien Emu's on loose in NH.
How come no one told me? 

[KBCraig]

Heh. 

Back when emu eggs and hatchlings were being sold as an MLM scheme, I decided to check out a local emu farm. I wasn't buying into the pyramid paradigm, but I was interested in the animals. They're beautiful, but spooky. Eerily silent when moving, for a six-foot, 100-pound bird.

A couple of years later they hit that critical market mass. Emus transitioned from a seller's market (a grand per unhatched egg, or $3-4k per pair of opposite-sex chicks, and up to $10k for a proved breeding pair), to a commodity market: about four bucks a pound, feathers and all.

The breeders on the upside of the pyramid managed to convince a lot of suckerspeople that the bubble would last for several years. Whoops! People who bought into the pyramid scheme suddenly realized that their $100k investment in breeding pairs, was worth about $3k on the hoof. Feet. Claws. Whatever. Ratite feed (yes, there really is Purina Ratite Chow) is expensive when you've already lost money.

Suddenly able to do simple math, emu owners realized they were money ahead by just opening the gates.

I can't tell you how many local stories there were about blurry-eyed turkey hunters (some of them suffering the after-affects of Wild Turkey), wandering into the woods in the pre-dawn hours and unexpectedly finding themselves eye-to-eye with a "turkey" that could kick their ass, shotgun or no.

Around that same time, I was driving in western Arkansas (Hwy. 270 between Pencil Bluff and Mount Ida) when I came upon a bunch of cars pulled off the road. There was a livestock trailer with the door open, so I knew they were trying to catch an escaped critter. I didn't know what that critter was, until I pulled carefully around them, only to be passed by a high-steppin' emu truckin' on down the road at about 45mph.

My Antipodean friends tell me that it's pronounced "emyoo", equal emphasis on both syllables, not "EE-moo or "EE-myoo".

Thanks for the video. 

[Kat Kanning]

They can survive in the cold on their own?

[Eli]

I remember playing rogue when I was a kid.  Your character was a :-) and the letters were monsters in the dungeon.  E was for emu.  My gravestone often said, "Eli. Level 1. Killed by and Emu?"

[Lloyd Danforth]

Well......I guess you will be, particularly, vigilant about Runaway Emus, then.