Campus Police shoot Emu

[Byron Quick]

Jim,

Remember, our human ancestors invented a plethora of deadly weapons way back in the mists of the dawn of time. They went to the trouble of this sustained effort for what they believed to be good and sufficient reasons.


Jim, I'm willing to bet that being able to avoid emu rassling in the future was a huge spur to primeval weapons research programs.

Remember what Tuner said about your size and a half grown emu. Truer words have never been spoken. It's a mantra to live by. Please, if you are not very familiar with a species' behavioral habits and physical abilities, don't go getting cuddly with it.

I know a guy that picked up an injured squirrel one day with the intention of taking it to the vet for treatment. Ever noticed the chisel like teeth of a squirrel. Used for biting through the tough hard shells of nuts? Or the claws? Used to climb and cling to lofty branches? Well, the injured, and justifiably frightened squirrel clamped down on my friend's hand with those claws and started biting through his fingers. Through the flesh and through the bone. My friend starts gyrating while trying to sling the killer squirrel off of his bleeding hand. Howling in agony. Finally had to beat the squirrel to death against a tree as he couldn't get its claws loose and every time it let go with its teeth, it was only to punch holes clean through another finger bone.

City boy keeps a weather eye out for wild critters nowadays. Born Free and all that stuff are movies. So is Star Wars.

It ain't just city boys though, Jim. I know a man about your size that jumps on alligators to wrestle them. In the water. Big ones. He's darn good at it, too. Only problem is it's a field of endeavour that doesn't allow any mistakes.

Jim, if I had a choice between jumping on a 6 foot alligator in the water or tackling an emu, I wouldn't be happy about the situation at all. But I'd jump on the alligator before I tried the emu.

I'm not as big as you. I am big enough that guys your size have decided they weren't as froggy as they thought they were. I'm not going to tackle an emu with both of us working as a team.

 

[taliv]

i think this thread gets my vote for "best thread evar!"

 

[sm]

You just though Jim March's Revolver Check-Out thread was good...

Wait until the Jim March's Emu Checking-Out thread gets stickied...


Sorry Jim...

Then again you figure a Emu in Election Security uniform would keep the voting truthful?

 

[1911Tuner]

Birds

heh. Jim...you ain't gotta jump on an Emu to learn the truth about birds.
My grandpappy had a big Leghorn rooster that not many would wanna tangle with twice.

 

[YellowLab]

You have to nuke them from orbit.. its the only way to be sure.

 

[Preacherman]

Sounds like we need to open an emusement park . . .

 

[1911Tuner]

Emu-sement?

Groannnn

 

[Larry Ashcraft]

Would somebody please take the good padre outside and...

Never mind.

We had an ostrich farmer about 3/4 mile from my place. One of his birds got out and was roaming a sod farm down the road, so the sod farm owner called and asked the ostrich owner; "What shall we do with this bird?"

"I don't care, shoot him, just don't try to catch him."

Sod farm owner asked his help; "Would you like a big chicken for dinner?"

Farmhands feasted that evening.

BTW, nothing better than ostrich meat.

 

[GEM]

A friend of mine was a big bird hunter and had a lease. He was out with his dogs looking for birdies. An emu charged his dogs to kick the crap out of them and then charged him.

He let off a couple of rounds of birdie load from his shotgun in front of it to bounce into its shins and it skeedaddled. Sorry, it wasn't tactical emu penetrator rounds.

I've seen them wandering around around Rock Springs in TX.

Big things!!

 

[sm]

I will neither confirm or deny...

See these fellows from France were here visiting about business stuff , and as happens there is some "cultural exchange".

They asked about hunting, fishing, and it got back to hunting and Southern Quail and how "these birds hold and then explode under foot"..."how fast they are running on the ground...".

Farm country, walking the property, and a old boy had some Ostrich's ...
"What is that?"
"Quail"
"I thought they were little?"
"That one is , wait until Momma comes looking for Junior"

It got all straightened out over the fact that Southern BBQ was NOT very good , we hang folks for less offenses than that around here.

Now the folks from Spain were facinating, [Red Deer, driven bird hunts, etc.] Folks from Spain can shoot cow pasture skeet too, knew how to handle a shotgun...
I won't mention the France Fellers and guns...the idea of guns, pastures and such 'uncivilized'.

I got a better chance of being Ambassador to Spain - France is totally out of the question.

Not an Emu, Ostrich is close enough, principle of the matter you understand.

 

[carpettbaggerr]

Would somebody please take the good padre outside and...

Emulsify him?

Yeah, yeah, I know, but emulation is the sincerest form of flattery......

 

[Eat Beef]

A while back, after the whole ostrich/emu pyramid scam fell apart, folks would dump the suckers everywhere.

So some buffoon knocks the lock off the gate to one of my pastures and dumps a pair. No big deal, except they kept trying to run up to the cattle, which scared the cattle, and they would run off. Then the emus would kinda chase them around. I think they just wanted to hang out, but it was making the cows nuts.

Well, this place was pretty well surounded by houses, so I chased them back into a patch of woods, and dispatched them both. If memory serves correctly it took 5 rounds from a .22lr to kill them both.

Long story short, either these cops need to go back to marksmanship 101, or they just figured they had a chance to shoot something, so why not unload.

 

[Vairochana]

Emusing

A while back I was working in a well known Brisbane animal park.
In the paddock with the roos and wallabies we had some emus.
Now people could hand feed them along with the others so they were fairly tame.
One of these emus, Herbie, would follow you around (actually he wouldn't just follow- if you stopped long enough he would hump you like a dog- but that is another thread)
Anyhoo Herbie would follow about 5 feet behind as you walked among the tourists. There is little funnier than watching the face of a Japanese tourist who has asked you to bring the emu over as he realises just how close this huge bird is (Herbie was perfectly safe- they were never in danger)

 

[Zen21Tao]

About seven to eight month ago we had two chicken shooting incidents.

The first was a student here at UF who shot a couple of chickens with a BB gun because he didn't like the noise the made in the morning. Man PETA got pissed off at this kid.

http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051124/COLUMNS15/211240310/-1/COLUMNIST15

PETA seeks stiff penalty over UF chicken shooting
November 24. 2005 6:01AM

This week, for most people, it's all about turkeys.

But the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are worried about other feathered friends - specifically chickens that University of Florida police allege were shot by a college student earlier this month. Officers said the 20-year-old told them he used a pellet gun to shoot two of the birds, which were loose on campus, because he was tired of the noise.

Police arrested the student for animal cruelty, and PETA is asking people to petition State Attorney Bill Cervone to seek the maximum sentence of five years in prison in the case. The group also wants the student, if he's convicted, to undergo psychiatric evaluation and counseling at his own expense and to be barred "from ever again having anything to do with animals in the state of Florida."

Spencer Mann, spokesman for the State Attorney's Office, confirmed prosecutors have received the group's request.

Talking about the organization's recommendations, Cervone said, "I may have a different perspective on this case than the PETA people."

Prosecutors are still investigating and have not made a decision on formal charges.

The second incident involved the fire department driving through the town of High Springs FL shooting chickens that were "running amok in the streets of High Springs." This left some residents rather ticked off.

http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbc...04/EDITORIALS/60203024&SearchID=7324806106229

High Springs chickens come home to roost

It's probably just as well that it wasn't police officers who were picked to pick off the renegade chickens running amok in the streets of High Springs.
That would have invited the inevitable comparisons of High Springs P.D. with the Keystone Kops and Mayberry.
But since it was firefighters doing the chicken-plunking....well, sorry, but it still invites the same comparisons.
Fine, so High Springs has a loose chicken problem. And something needed to be done. But shooting them down in the streets with small rifles?
"They did not take into consideration that this is a neighborhood with kids," Janet LaShells, town resident, complained to The Sun this week. "They were running through it like banshees."
And she was talking about the firefighters, not the chickens.
We can sympathize with town officials who say they didn't know what else to do. That trapping efforts hadn't worked. And that they got no help from other agencies.
And let's face it, residents likely would have clucked-clucked over the expense if, like Key West, High Springs had laid out $20,000 for a professional chicken catcher.
But shooting fowl down in the public streets smacks of well, foul play.
Especially coming just months after the well publicized arrest of a UF student for animal cruelty after he used a pellet gun on chickens near Lake Alice, at UF.
Not to mention that, when it was all over, firefighters had only bagged about eight of an estimated 70 feathered fugitives. At that rate, the cows would come home before they managed to snipe all of the cluckers.
Perhaps now that High Springs' chicken infestation problem has become so well known, offers of more expert assistance will be forthcoming. In the meantime, town officials ought to think of ways to make chicken salad, in a manner of speaking, out of wild chickens.
We're thinking of a new marketing event: The annual High Springs Easter Egg Hunt.
Winners get to keep both the eggs and the chickens.