The Good, the Bad, and the Emus

by Donna Andrews

  Worse? That was hard to imagine.

  Thor began turning the truck around in the relatively narrow space of the clearing.

  “I don’t want to leave immediately,” I said. “Let’s look for the emus.”

  “I figured you’d probably say that,” he said. “I just like to have the truck ready to roll in case a bear or something comes along.”

  If he was trying to scare me—well, no sense letting him know he’d succeeded.

  “Is that likely?” I tried to sound calm and interested.

  “I’ve only seen one once,” he said. “Actually, I got in the habit of turning the truck around because when we’d bring the feed up, the emus would swarm us, and I didn’t want to run over any of them while turning around.”

  He parked the truck, and we both got out and peered around.

  “If this was February, when they’d gotten used to being fed here, they’d be lined up waiting for us,” he said. “Let’s put the grain out.”

  He hopped out of the truck, lowered its tailgate, and hefted one of the fifty-pound sacks of feed. I followed his example, a little awkwardly thanks to the bandages on my left hand.

  “I can get them both if you like,” he said.

  “I’m fine,” I replied.

  I might have let him handle both sacks if I’d known he was going to carry them across the ford in the stream and over to the other side of the clearing. We couldn’t have hauled them over in the truck and then turned around? Or for that matter, spread out the grain on the near side of the stream?

  But I concentrated on not dropping the sack, and we came to a stop beside what I assumed was an emu feeding station. It was an eight-foot-long trough set high off the ground. Its eight legs were protected with baffles, similar to those birders used to keep the squirrels off their feeders. There was a roof to protect the grain from precipitation. I couldn’t quite understand why it had bars running from the trough to the roof all the way around, so I asked Thor.

  “The emus can fit their heads through the space between the bars,” he said, “but it’s too small for deer. Ms. Delia’s idea, and it worked pretty well.”

  “Not a fan of deer, Ms. Delia?”

  “They ate her garden,” he said with a grin. “She used to say there were enough fat, lazy deer in the world without our helping them.”

  Thor climbed up a couple of rough steps built at one end of the trough, and I handed up the bags to him. When he was finished spreading the feed with a battered old rake that had been left lying in the trough, he picked up something that was hanging by a rope. It looked like a crudely made tomtom with a padded drumstick.

  “My emu lure,” he said.

  He began pounding the tomtom in a two-beat rhythm: Thump thump! Thump thump! Thump thump!

  After a while he stopped and cocked his head to listen.

  “Nothing yet,” he said. “Let’s go across the stream and wait a while.”

  “So emus like percussion instruments?” I asked, as we walked.

  “Emus are percussion instruments,” he said. “They make a booming, thumping noise a lot like that drum. And also a growling noise, but I can’t do that, and anyway it wouldn’t carry very far.”

  “So when they hear that, they’ll think another emu is here and come running?”

  “Or maybe they just think, ‘hey, that crazy human who brings the goodies is playing his drum again,’” he said, with a chuckle. “They seem to come when I do it. But they could be at the other side of the park right now. We might have to bring grain up for a few days to get them used to showing up here.”

  “Or maybe not,” I said. “Look!”

  Thor whirled and then froze, staring at the head that had suddenly appeared out of the thicket.

  “Awesome,” he murmured. Without taking his eyes off the emu, he reached into his pocket, took out his cell phone, and began snapping pictures of it.

  I slowly lifted my binoculars to my eyes and trained them on the emu.

  A knobby head that wouldn’t have been out of place on a dinosaur topped a long, slender neck. Both head and neck were feathered, but sparsely, so the emu’s blue skin showed through. And its eyes were a bright coppery orange. The head swiveled left and then right. Not the prettiest bird I’d ever seen, but as Thor had said, awesome.

  Then it stepped out of the shrubbery and began picking its way delicately across the clearing toward the trough.

  “That could be Liz,” he said.

  “The emu?”

  “Short for Elizabeth Cady Stanton,” he said. “Ms. Delia had names for all of them. She could recognize them from pretty far away.”

  As we watched, Liz picked her way across the clearing to the emu feeder. For something so large she moved with curious grace. Her head and body bobbed with each step in a kind of swaying rhythm like a camel.

  Thump thump! Thump thump!

  I glanced over at Thor, but he wasn’t playing his drum. He was staring openmouthed at the emu.

  I looked back at Liz and saw her throat swelling out with each thump.

  Liz stopped at the trough and stared down her bill at us for a few long moments. Then she arched her long, slender neck and slipped her head through the bars to the feeder.

  “They’re coming,” Thor murmured.

  Two more emus were stepping out into the clearing. They thumped and growled a bit and then they headed for the feeding trough. Liz pulled her head out of the trough, raised it up as high as she could reach, and took a few running steps toward the approaching emus, hissing all the while. They fled, and circled around to approach the other end of the trough, giving Liz a wide berth.

  “Now I’m sure it’s Liz,” Thor said. “Ms. Delia always said she was the boss emu. She beat Louisa May Alcott in a knock-down, drag-out fight a year and a half ago, and poor Lou was still limping months later.”

  “So you could probably recognize her, too, if she showed up,” I said. “Are there any other emus you would recognize?”

  I didn’t really care if he could, actually, but I was fascinated by Cordelia’s system for naming the emus.

  “Ella,” he said, after a few moments of thought. “She’s almost a white emu—not albino, but really, really pale.”

  “Ella Fitzgerald?” I asked.

  “No, Ella Wheeler Wilcox,” he said. “I think she was a poet.”

  “Opinions on that differ,” I said. “Look, I could watch the emus all day, but maybe we should go back and tell my grandfather where they are.”

  “Good idea.” Still staring at the emus, he fumbled in his pocket for the keys.

  “Wait.” I pulled out my phone and clicked the button to start the camera app. “Before we go, let’s take a few pictures of me with the emus in the background. As proof that we’ve found them.”

  Thor took my phone and took several pictures. About halfway through our photo session, one of the emus noticed us and began walking our way.

  “Should we maybe get back into the truck?” I asked.

  “They’re usually pretty friendly once they get used to us feeding them,” Thor said. “It’s when they raise their heads really high that you have to keep your eye on them.”

  The emu raised its head really high.

  “But they’re not used to you feeding them at this time of year,” I said, as I backed toward the truck. “And they’ve never seen me before.”

  “Well, yeah.” He turned and headed for the truck as well.

  We made it into the cab before the emu arrived. Emus. One of them came to my side of the truck, stuck its head right next to the window, and peered at me, cross-eyed, over its beak. Thor handed me back my phone and I snapped a photo of the emu. As if puzzled by the shutter noise the phone made when I took the picture, the emu cocked its head in curiosity. I snapped another shot of that.

  The other two were peering in Thor’s side. He didn’t seem rattled by that, I realized with envy.

  “Why are they staring at us?” I asked. I was trying to remember some
of the emu lore Grandfather had been spouting so blithely for the past day or two. I didn’t recall any stories of trucks being savaged by flocks of emus, so we were probably safe enough. Then again, Grandfather seemed to like emus. He was taking all this trouble to rescue them. I should have remembered that his favorite birds and animals were invariably the ones that were fierce, dangerous, and highly photogenic.

  “No idea,” Thor said. “They seem to like watching humans. If you like, I can start the truck moving. They’ll get out of the way if I move very slowly.”

  “We probably should report back to Grandfather,” I said. “In fact, even better idea—let’s send him a couple of the photos. Oh, wait—the cell towers are probably still out. Back to camp, then.”

  The trip back seemed even longer than the trip out, in part because I was worried that the emus would disappear while we were gone. Although Thor assured me that another sack or two of grain and a little work with his emu caller would lure them back again.

  Just as we were turning onto the dirt road into Camp Emu, I spotted Dad, driving along in his SUV. I almost fell out the window of Thor’s uncle’s truck waving him to a stop.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  As I ran over to his SUV, I could see he was reaching into the back for his medical bag.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “Look!”

  I held up my phone with the picture of the emu staring through the truck window on its screen.

  “You found them!”

  Chapter 17

  Dad immediately pulled out his radio and shared the news with Grandfather, who showed up half an hour later. Although I knew Grandfather was eager to start rounding up the emus, I’d assumed that he would congratulate me on my detective work and then we’d huddle over the map so Thor and I could show him precisely where the emus were, and he and Caroline and the Valkyrie would start planning for tomorrow’s expedition.

  But he practically didn’t wait for Caroline to bring the Jeep to a stop before leaping out of it.

  “About time someone showed some initiative!” He scrambled into the passenger side of Thor’s truck, taking the place I’d just vacated. “Let’s go!”

  “We’re not waiting for the camera crew?” I asked. “And where did you ditch your bodyguards?”

  “Hell with them if they can’t keep up,” he growled. “Take me to the emus!”

  “Move over.” I climbed back into the cab of the truck. “This is my grandfather, Dr. Montgomery Blake,” I said to the understandably startled Thor. “Grandfather, this is Thor Larsen, who has been helping Miss Annabel and Ms. Delia feed the emus.”

  “A Norseman, eh!” Grandfather exclaimed. “God eftermiddag, Thor! Drive on!”

  Thor looked pained, and I suspected he was trying to find a polite way of pointing out that he didn’t speak anything but English.

  “If Thor’s going to drive us somewhere, I should remind you that we’re paying for Thor’s time, right?” I asked. “And his expenses.”

  “Ja!” Grandfather said. “Certainly. Kjapp deg!”

  “That’s a yes,” I said. “Even I can figure out that much.”

  “Wait for us!” came a shout from nearby.

  Dad had parked his car and was scrambling into the Jeep beside Caroline. Two other volunteers—presumably the bodyguards—jumped in the Jeep’s backseat. Thor put the truck in gear and drove off, still looking a little shell-shocked. Caroline followed.

  It didn’t help that Grandfather spent the first ten minutes of our drive declaiming something in whatever Scandinavian language he’d decided Thor spoke. Some sort of warlike epic poem, by the sound of it, though considering that I didn’t speak a word of Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, or Icelandic, he could have been reciting a grocery list and it would have sounded the same to me. Thor just drove, eyeing Grandfather out of the corner of his eye from time to time, and dodging when his grandiose gestures got a little out of hand.

  Thor was probably as relieved as I was when we pulled into the little clearing by the river.

  And to my delight, there were now four emus eating at the trough.

  The emus looked up as we drove into the clearing, and the smallest one ran to the edge of the woods and stood there looking at us. The others just stared at us for a little while and returned to their eating.

  “Fascinating.” Grandfather pulled out his binoculars and studied the emus. Dad and Caroline pulled up behind us in Grandfather’s Jeep. Dad hopped out, ran over to us, pulled out his binoculars, and took up the same pose as Grandfather.

  I could hear Caroline back in the car shouting into her radio, apparently giving directions to someone over a bad connection.

  The bodyguards took up their posts on either side of Grandfather, and to their credit, they spent almost as much time alertly scanning their surroundings as watching the emus.

  I watched Dad and Grandfather for a few moments. A pity the camera crew wasn’t here yet. Grandfather would either have to keep gazing at the emus until they arrived, or reenact this first encounter with the birds.

  Grandfather took a few careful steps toward the emus. I’d seen him do exactly the same thing dozens of times in his documentaries, and it seemed strange not to have the usual voice-over telling what he was up to. An irresistible urge overcame me.

  “Dr. Blake approaches the emus cautiously, to avoid startling his quarry,” I intoned, trying to imitate the hushed, dramatic tone that his favorite narrator would have used. “After inspecting the new arrivals, the emus return to their feeding.”

  Caroline, who was joining us, binoculars in hand, smothered laughter at that. Dad and Grandfather ignored me.

  “What the devil’s that thing they’re eating from?” Grandfather asked.

  “An emu feeding station,” Thor said.

  “Brilliant!” Grandfather said. “Whose idea was that?”

  “Ms. Delia had the idea,” Thor said. “And I built it.”

  “Ingenious.” Grandfather appeared to be studying the feeding station rather than the emus, if the angle of his binoculars was anything to go by. “Excellent job! You have a real talent for this work!”

  “Thanks.” Thor looked shyly pleased.

  “You’re a college student.” Grandfather lowered his binoculars and fixed Thor with what I called his interrogation look.

  “This fall,” Thor said. “Virginia Tech.”

  “Perfect!” Grandfather said. “They have an excellent wildlife sciences program.”

  “I’m doing engineering,” Thor said.

  “Hmph!” Clearly Grandfather didn’t approve. “We need to talk about that.”

  He frowned at Thor for a few moments, then put the binoculars back to his eyes. Thor let out a deep breath when Grandfather’s eyes left him.

  “Of course, they don’t have a department of Scandinavian languages,” he said over his shoulder. “Only a handful of U.S. colleges do. What a shame.”

  Poor Thor tensed up again.

  “I think the emus are running out of food,” Dad said. “No telling if they’ll stay around with no food.”

  “Where is that blasted camera crew?” Grandfather growled. “They’re going to miss it all.”

  “How about if Thor and I fetch more grain for the emus?” I suggested.

  “Hurry back.” Grandfather returned to his binoculars. “And light a fire under that camera crew.”

  So Thor and I stopped by the camp to give directions to the camera crew. By the time we got back with another four bags of grain, the whole expedition had relocated to the park. Several dozen cars were parked on the shoulder of the main road, on either side of the park entrance, and there almost wasn’t room for Thor’s uncle’s truck in the little clearing.

  Apparently Michael had managed the difficult road in the Twinmobile—he, Natalie, and the boys were there, all gazing through their binoculars at the emus. And at Grandfather, who was standing in front of the empty emu feeding pen, pointing out how ingenious it was to the attendi
ng camera crew. He beamed when Thor and I appeared.

  “Velkomen!” he called out. “Kom hit!”

  I deduced from his gestures that he was trying to lure Thor to his side, so I gave the boy a little shove in the right direction. Grandfather insisted on filming Thor as he refilled the emu feeder.

  Now that we’d located at least a token contingent of emus, Grandfather’s good humor had returned. In fact, everyone was in the best of spirits. Someone had arrived with an additional consignment of radios, which unlike our cell phones worked just fine in spite of the blackout. I snagged one for myself on general principles. Most of the volunteers headed off into the woods, armed with compasses and GPS receivers and radios, to see if they could locate any more emus. A few stayed behind to make sure that any emu who left the feeding trough was trailed by a party of volunteers, with orders to follow them for an hour or two, get an idea of where the emus tended to hang out, and then capture their assigned birds and escort them back to the clearing. Meanwhile, Grandfather and the camera crew were having a glorious time filming the emus who were clustered around the feeding trough, pigging out on the latest supply of grain. Occasionally Thor would pipe up and identify one of the emus, or pretend to. Actually, I doubted he was pretending, partly because I’d figured out he was surprisingly literal-minded and partly because I didn’t really think a kid his age would have heard of Edna St. Vincent Millay or William Jennings Bryan, much less named emus after them.

  Eventually the new grain supply ran out, but the five emus who had stayed to the last seemed to have grown accustomed to the presence of humans and continued to hang around in the part of the clearing across the river. One of them sat in the river as if to cool off and stared as if it found us vastly entertaining. Another plopped down in the dust and began preening its feathers with its beak, completely ignoring us. As for the other three—

  “What are they doing, anyway?” Thor asked. “I’ve seen them do it a lot, but I have no idea why.”

  The three emus were standing in a rough triangle. One was just standing there, looking back and forth between the other two, who were strutting about, puffing out their chests, bobbing their necks up and down, and running rapidly from side to side. Every once in a while one of the active two would actually make a little dash at the other. Occasionally, the quiet emu would wave its neck around a little, but it seemed mostly content to watch the others preen and threaten. And one or more of them seemed to be making a low booming noise that carried to where we were.