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Cyclists's One Word Response To Emu Attack Is Priceless

Isn't it magpies we're meant to be afraid of?

Emus. They're mad. You might think they're just a harmless half of the coat of arms, but forget it.

For evidence, we submit the following video. The video was taken by Chris Wilson, a keen cyclist who lives in Canberra. Wilson was riding on the city's outskirts recently when he was charged by this furious feathered fiend.

Eek! We mean "beak"!

The Huffington Post Australia contacted Chris to see how he was coping in the aftermath of his unexpected bird battering.

"It was quite a surreal experience," he said, explaining how the incident panned out.

"The emus were just pecking the grass and sitting there casually. I rode past and circled back and thought I'd stop and get a photo. That's when one of them started charging at me. Obviously as part of the intimidation factor, it lifted its head as high as it could, puffed its feathers out and made this drumming noise from its throat."

Sounds scary as hell to us.

"As a cyclist in Canberra, when you go out at this time of year, you go out expecting to be swooped [by magpies], but you don't expect to be charged by emus.

No, you don't.

Now at this point, observant readers might be wondering to themselves, hang on, if this happened to Chris, who's taking the video?

Glad you asked. It's actually Chris taking the video of another cyclist who rode by soon afterwards and suffered pretty much the same fate.

So what to do if attacked by an emu?

"The best thing to do would be to gently walk away because they're just protecting their young and once they realise the threat is gone they will typically stop chasing," ACT Ranger Shelley Swain told The Canberra Times.

"We are in breeding season now so people shouldn't feed them because as soon as we see people lure them into food they will keep coming down for it and that's when they start that behaviour."

So now you know. Before we let Chris go, we thought we'd ask him for one word which sums up the experience. His answer?

"Bemused."

Which we think was a pretty cool response, because you cant spell "bemused" without "emu".

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