Ostrich / Emu - Not Your Typical English Backyard Critter

Steve and I were merrily surfing the web (cause it's been raining for days!) the day before yesterday and looked up to see an ostrich in the pasture behind the house. Now we do see a lot of animals back there, cows, pheasants, wood pidgeons, magpies, squirrels and rabbits galore, but we don't normally see ostriches. It strolled across the field and disappeared into the woods. Gave us a moment's pause, but we didn't think too much of it...

...until it appeared yesterday in our back garden! Somehow it had managed to get inside the fence and then couldn't figure out how to get back out again. It wandered about for two hours poking its head through the fence, trying to get back out. We didn't go near it, having spoken with the ostrich lady at the Hoghton Tower Farmer's Market that morning. She sells ostrich meat so we asked her if she was missing one and she told us they are quite dangerous. So we left it quite alone in the yard!

I called the police to see if anyone had reported a 6 foot tall missing bird, nope. Then I called the Royal Society for Protection of Birds who do protect birds, but they don't rescue them (?). And finally I called the RSPCA who does rescue, but not dangerous birds on Sunday (because there are only two people on between Blackburn and Scotland and you need a group for a big bird like that).

After two hours, the cows came up the field and being quite nosy cows, came over to investigate the odd looking creature in the garden. Waking up to a half a dozen Holsteins staring down at you must have been a shock to the poor bird because it panicked and began careening around the garden. It is a very small garden and a very big bird. It finally forced its way through the fence and over the rock wall into the woods and took off!

We did a bit of research and found out it's an emu rather than a female ostrich (three toes instead of two). No sign of it since and I'll be surprised if the RSPCA folks will be able to find it when they show up today. I suspect it's half-way to Scotland by now!