Kathy Rooney ... thought construction was at the heart of the backlog [on the Pennsylvania Turnpike], until she saw a large, gangly bird loping straight down the center of the highway.

“It was coming towards us, but it was on the white lines,” said Rooney, of Mt. Lebanon. “It was like it knew to stay on the white lines. It stayed right down the middle.”
...
Emus can reach top speeds of 30 mph.

After two hours of chasing it on the road, trying to corner it in the woods and even attempting a cowboy-style lassoing, troopers finally decided to stun the 4-foot-tall bird with a Taser to stop it rather than shoot it.
...
The bird fell to the ground after the shock. Troopers moved the emu—which was still alive—to the side of the road. That’s where it took its last breath.

my brothers. my family. my sister emily. and everyone else:

by the time you read this message, scratched as it is into the hard soil floor of our compound, i will likely no longer be.  be alive, i mean.  please do not despair--do not weep.  i’m fairly sure, actually, that we don’t have tear ducts.  but regardless, rest assured: i died a hero’s death, standing up for what is right.

what was i fighting for?  justice, equality, and more of those spicy greens that we only get every other sunday.  for we emus, we who are oppressed, are we not people, too?  if you stab us, do we not bleed?  if you frighten us, do we not run, swiftly and squawking, into the far corner of the pen?  if you cook us, do we not make a succulent burger?

the answer to the first three questions is yes.  the answer to the fourth is also yes, but that is not the point. 

you know what the point is, fellow flightless prisoners, if you have ever looked out past the fence to the great machines belching smoke as they roar past us.  the humans use these to transport themselves places, but i say that must end.  the tyranny of “cars” is too vast, too unjust.  the humans must shed the yoke of vehicles.

the humans must begin riding emus.

how have they not realized this before?  do they not know that we can run at speeds up to 30mph, and do this with only minimal belching?  they must not, or we would already be free to race back and forth along the vast “byways” of this land. 

i shall be the seed that grows the change of all of this, friends.  i have been studying the “traffic patterns” of these humans, and today when we travel in the back of one of the clattering, belching machines, i will make my escape and make our abilities known. 

i do not expect to survive this demonstration; humans fear that which they do not understand, and they kill that which they fear.  they will do everything they can to suppress my statement.  but do not mourn me.  rather, pick up my mantle.  show them that emus are the future.

freedom!!

-emmanuel

Tags: nature, transportation, those spicy greens that we only get every other sunday, emus, freedom fighters