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Remember that legless wheelchair bound man from last week who got tasered by police twice, after which he politely and properly queried “how much resisting I’m going to do with no legs?”
This is better. Apparently police in Forest, Mississippi needed a stun gun and handcuffs to subdue an emu after he outmaneuvered them for two days, leading them doggedly on a birdhunt across two freeways.
Beyond the obvious “what the hell did they need handcuffs for,” this story is curious in at least one other respect. Emus, in addition to being slow and flightless, are visibly, notoriously, excruciatingly stupid. Mississippi’s finest really needed a stun gun to bring this poor animal down?
Officers had to use a stun gun and handcuffs to capture an emu running loose on Interstate 20 in central Mississippi on Sunday… motorists had been calling 911 since Friday to report sightings of two emus… Authorities had been unable to find the animals… Culpepper and deputies were able to surround the animal but has to use the Taser and handcuffs to finally get it off the road.
The San Diego Wild Animal Park used to have an emu named Max. The trainers there, who are widely considered in zoology circles to be some of the best in the world, worked with Max for decades. The best they could ever do was get him to walk from one side of a stage to the other and eat. Which is to say, nothing at all. Because emus, in case we haven’t mentioned it, are incredibly stupid. Also: slow and flightless.
Yet somehow these two still managed for several days to outwit Mississippi police, who then needed nonlethal weapons designed for prisons and war zones to subdue them. This strategy is in contrast to the one used by Australian aborigines, which involves dangling balls of feathers and rags from trees.
Our country is in good hands.