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Unclaimed bird has spent summer and much of the fall at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park's Spotsylvania Courthouse battlefield. Date published: 10/21/2004 By LAURA MOYER Since July, a renegade emu has found the National Park Service's Spotsylvania Courthouse battlefield a fine place to hang out. There are good things to eat, like small animals, lizards, bugs, berries, grasses and grains. There are secure places to sleep, tangles of brush that provide a windbreak but look out onto open fields. Sometimes there are people, on foot or in cars, and that's scary. The park emu is wary of humans, who stop and gawk and sometimes try to bother it. Back in the hot months, some men came with tranquilizer darts. But the big bird wouldn't let them get close enough to shoot. The brown-gray bird faded back into the brown-gray tree trunks, and the men were stymied. Since then, the emu has spotted people and people have spotted it, but so far there haven't been any flaps. Park and animal control officials don't know how the emu got there. It might have been dumped at the rural Spotsylvania County park--1,480 acres of forest and field that are part of the Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park. It might have walked there on its own. It definitely didn't fly. Emus resemble small ostriches, and like ostriches they have wings that are more decorative than functional. The puny wings sometimes flutter, but they can't lift a bird that grows up to 6 feet and 125 pounds. No Spotsylvania emu farmers have reported any runaways to the county animal control office, and those recently contacted by dispatcher Debra Samuels said all their big birds are accounted for. So the emu--Emma? Emil? It's hard to tell a female from a male--has just scratched around on its own, unclaimed and apparently unmissed. The bird is not aggressive toward humans, and it's not in much danger from animal predators, park and animal control officials say. Emus have strong kicks and sharp three-toed claws that might make a dog or coyote think twice. An emu can run 40 miles an hour, probably outpacing all but the most determined bears. And the bird is probably hardy enough to withstand a Virginia winter, said Fauquier County emu farmer Anne Geller, who was asked to share her emu expertise for this story.
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