THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 24, 1996 TAG: 9609240286
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SUSIE STOUGHTON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: 41 lines
How do you catch an emu?
By its stomach, according to a woman who raises the ostrich-like birds: Move its food and water closer and closer to a trap or its home, and the wayward fowl will return.
Or, you can sneak up behind it and throw a net over it. But if the bird sees you first . . . well, an emu can run about 40 mph. Emus, Australian natives, cannot fly, though they can quickly outdistance an Olympic sprinter.
The question about corralling an emu came up after several residents in the southern section of the city reported sightings of a strange, winged creature. One man told Animal Control Officer Cheryl Pisani that he had seen an ostrich Sunday on White Marsh Road, and a woman swore she'd spotted an emu Monday on nearby Desert Road.
The cagey bird runs away when approached, the callers said.
Capturing runaway birds isn't in her job description, said Pisani, who once chased 31 buffalo roaming loose in the city.
But she did contact Kathy Burket, who raises emus for meat in the Buckhorn section of Suffolk, about 10 miles from the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp, where the bird had been seen.
It wasn't hers.
``They're not going to catch it,'' Burket said, unless it is baited with food or snared in a net.
``It can survive out there all winter if they don't catch it,'' said Burket, who owns the I Am Emu Farm.
Burket will be flipping emu burgers at the State Fair in Richmond this weekend.
Perhaps the bird was running scared, like a turkey at Thanksgiving, Pisani said.
She said she doesn't have time to lure the loose emu home. But she thought she knew who might own it, though no one had filed a missing-emu report by late Monday.
``If he wants to have an emu,'' she said, ``he can learn to catch them.'' by CNB