Driving home to SD, we passed, uhm, I don’t know what. An ostrich farm? Ostrich ranch? Ostrich prison? Is this even an ostrich?
Anyway, whatever it is, we sped past a bunch of them pecking at the ground behind this chain-link fence. We’re in the middle of Nowhere, Utah, basically, and there’s this whole gathering of incongruous creatures and so I yelled, “Stop! Turn around!” and MB said, “Why?” and “Lord, what now?” and “White man’s burden!” which he says a lot when he’s around me. Whatever does it mean?? I cannot even pretend to know.
So he pulled over and, wisely, stayed in the car — well, I don’t know if it was wisdom so much as his long body and broad shoulders becoming arthritic and stooped from constantly crawling over the passenger seat with dignity. Anyway, he sat there, I jumped out with my craptacular cellphone/camera, figuring that all these creatures — ostriches, emus, emiches, whatevs — would scatter, all a’feared of the crazy sweaty lady lumbering their way. And most of them did scatter or just increase their nervous pecking. Except this one. The homeliest one of all. She strolled towards me, turned her head to regard me with one golden brown eye, weaving her skinny neck back and forth the whole time, hypnotizing me, luring me closer.
MB later told me that as he watched it all unfold from his perch in the car, he just sighed to himself, “Well, here we go. She’s gonna get a pecking.”
Well, hmmph. I did not “get a pecking.”
I just got this awesome picture instead:
She looks sooooo haughty, doesn’t she?
Hahaha! Yes! She really made me feel like the ugly one.
That’s the most elegant ostri-emu I’ve ever seen.
Incidentally, your timing couldn’t be more perfect: the ostrich-farming episode of “Dirty Jobs” was on yesterday. INTENSELY interesting. Ostriches ain’t too bright… Apparently, they haven’t changed since they were created and they’re supposedly as old as the dinosaurs or somesuch. And they KICK. Really hard. Oh, and they vomit in their drinking water.
Yes, I’m a geek.
But that information makes the pic that much more purty.
This picture is MUCH better than your getting pecked. 🙂