There was a time before multi-level marketing schemes when people sent money away to hustlers and con artists by getting excited by the promise of instant wealth from tiny little ads in the back of magazines. I was even scammed by sending away twenty-five dollars to a company in California that promised I could make millions of dollars just by stuffing envelopes. I’m glad I learned that lesson at a young age because apparently there are worse things that you can get scammed for. One of these, believe it or not, was buying emu eggs to hatch and grow in an attempt to later slaughter the animal for emu oil which is used to cure everything from hair loss to gout, to restoring leather saddles...or most likely, nothing at all.
Apparently, some optimistic soul bought a couple of these emu eggs and raised a bird to maturity a few miles away from my house, in a rural part of the county we always referred to as “The Mountain”. It was more of a hill, but anything a foot above being flat may as well be a mountain if its all you’re used to. I do not know the specifics but somehow this adolescent, ancient bird, managed to jump out of its enclosure and run off into the woods in the surrounding area, only to be seen sporadically.
Most people dismissed these sightings as an urban legend. How could an emu live in the woods? This area was known for its large deer population because the folks that lived around there ‘baited’ the deer with corn all year long. After a few years of feasting on this corn, the adolescent bird grew into an adult beast. Legend became reality. The bird started terrorizing the community. Randomly popping out of the woods to chase joggers or unsuspecting children. It even corned one old farmer and forced him to hide in his car for the better part of a day. I can’t even imagine strolling down a dirt road and coming face to face with this mishap of evolution. Finally, the people had enough and it was time for the bird to go.
Fortunately, or unfortunately for my family, there was only one person the townspeople could go to in times like these. My dad. Even though he didn’t hunt that much he managed to create this lore around him that he could track and kill any living creature. It probably had something to do with his awe-inspiring firearm collection, two-thirds of which had never been fired, or the fact that he dressed like a nineteenth-century grizzly hunter. Whatever it was the phone rang one winter afternoon and when he hung up he loudly exclaimed, “That’s it boys! I got the call!”.
Not knowing what that meant we inquired. He explained that someone had just asked him to take care of “The Bird”. Of course, we all knew what that meant. Everyone in town did. The bird was famous, although only a handful of people had ever witnessed it. “Who wants to go with me?” I declined. I figured it would just be another attempt to take us walking around in the woods for hours on end. I had better things to do. It just didn’t seem possible that they would even see “The Bird”, much less “take care of it”. My brother, on the other hand, accepted the invitation and off they went in the big red utility van.
About an hour later my brother walks in the back door white as a ghost. I asked him what happened and he walked right past me. I found him laying on his bed, eyes wide open, just staring at the ceiling. I asked again…
“Dad. D.d.dad. He’s crazy. He’s a crazy man.”
“What do you mean? What the hell happened?”
“W.w.we went out there. Out there to the mountain. Th.t.h.en he saw it. Saw it in a field. Told me to hold on. He drove right out there in th.that field by the mountain. The bird. It was right in front of us. He jumped out. Pulled out his pistol. Shot at it. The bird. It just looked at him. He unloaded the clip. Nothing. He unloaded another. Nothing. He unloaded another. Nothing. He got back in the van. Then the thing. The thing. It just fell over. He went out there. Looked at it. Yelled at me to get out. M.m.made me help him put it in the back of the van. He’s crazy. He’s a crazy man.”
I didn’t believe a word of it. Even though it was a convincing act. There was no way.
“Go Look!”
I walked to the back of the house and God’s honest truth, my father was stringing up a six-foot monster on our basketball goal. I could not believe it. I went out. Sure enough, it was real. He had done the local equivalent of killing the Loch Ness monster. As I stood there not knowing how to feel, the bird swinging back and forth, the old man comes over to me with bolt cutters in his hand. Leans over, and cuts one of the legs off, and hands it to me. Looks me in the eye. Smiles, and says…”Now that’s what I call a back scratcher.”
