Wild Bird Wednesday - Living with Erkberg

Many years ago in the late 70s an old friend went out bush shooting and turned up at our place early one morning with an emu chick and a dingo pup. The dingo pup is another story and a sad one. The emu chick a happier one.

We reared the chick, named it Erkberg and it lived happily in our front paddock. Some years later we had a phone call from a neighbour we did not know asking us if we would like another emu as they were moving back to the city and had to find a home for it. We agreed - so we had two emus. At some stage one of them escaped which left us with one. We do not know which one it was - all emus look alike!!

Then in 1980 our daughter brought home two emu chicks that had been hatched at her Agricultural College - so we had 3 emus. One of them died early on - the other one survived to adulthood. For a number of years we had two emus - now adult, until one died one cold winter. So now we had only one emu which was called Erkberg because we really had no idea which emu it was of the ones we had along the way. We have estimated that the surviving emu is either 37, 34 or 31 - all good ages for an emu to live.

Erkberg is still alive, though he decided about 10 years ago that he didn't really like horses and dogs, so he hopped the fence and now lives in the property next door.

Some time ago I featured this photo on Friday Fences, but I thought I would include it in this post for Wild Bird Wednesday as I do like it. It was taken during a holiday on  Yorke Peninsula and i was lucky enough to catch sight of these emus as we were driving past.

Liz Needle - linking with Wild Bird Wednesday.