Emu

In my last post, I wrote that I was an emu because I weighed much more than I thought I would. My observation was ill-informed and unjust to emus. Upon further research, I have learned that emus don’t even weigh 100 pounds. I’m not going to say what I weigh until I weigh 30 pounds less than that number but I will say, I weigh more than an emu. I want to clear this up so I don’t start getting a lot of emu hate mail. Emu just came to me while I was writing and trying to think of a really big bird.

When I was 12 and my sisters were 6 (and my brother was 11 but he doesn’t really have a role in this story), my family went to Vancouver, B.C. for a long summer weekend. I started the trip by sailor diving into the Hyatt hotel pool (diving with arms at my side) and smashed my face into the bottom of the pool, which I think is why my neck is so screwed up to this day.

I digress. During the trip, my parents took us to the Stanley Park Zoo. There exists a series of photos taken by my mother during our visit to the zoo. In this series of zoo photos there are several showing an emu grabbing my sister, Molly, by the palm tree (pony tail) on the top of her head and trying to pull her into the emu cage. True story. We have photos of an EMU with my sister’s pony tail in its beak and my sister is being pulled off-balance toward a chain link fence. She has a VERY surprised look on her face. My mother did not stop taking pictures and grab my sister from the emu. This was in 1977. There were no digital cameras. my mother was snapping pictures, forwarding the film and snapping again while an Emu was pulling Molly into the Emu enclosure. I am in the background with scabs all over my face from scraping the bottom of the pool and I am clearly aghast. Somehow we got Molly away from the emu and she still has all her hair.

So naturally when trying to think of a big bird, I went with emu because I have a history with them.

Also, last night I was doing a crossword puzzle and the clue was “Birds that have green eggs”. I initially went with “owls” b/c that is a 4 letter word but it didn’t work and then I thought of my blog post and changed the answer to “emus” and I was right! See how the resolutions are all coming together?

Crosswords/weight loss/emus.

I looked up emus and they do have green eggs. Not the pale emu’s egg green (a la robin’s egg blue) I envisioned but a deep dark forest green. So now I will not want to paint a room emu’s egg green. Anyone can look up a photo of an emu egg but it takes a little more work to find emu egg art as shown here. And by a little more work I mean, the same amount, it’s just Google.

I don’t have any inspiring or motivating diet/nutrition/fitness tips today (“did she ever have any?”) so I thought this could be an educational interlude and we can all learn a little something about emus.

• First emu fact: Maggie is both taller and fatter than emus.
• Second emu fact: Emus lay very large dark green eggs.
• Third emu fact: Emus like pony tails.

And there is today’s lesson.
As I researched large, flightless birds I found that I should have categorized myself as an ostrich. At least ostriches weigh more than I do. Well, adult ostriches do. And ostriches don’t have colored eggs. AND a human (even me) could stand on an ostrich egg and not break it.