encounter with an ostrich

[Fil]

Hi,

I thought I would share with you my friend's pre Christmas encounter with an ostrich.  My friend, who rides with me on my horses, has her own horses too, and a few weeks ago took one of them out for a quiet hack up the lane by her house. The first thing that happened was she unexpectedly encountered two other riders (I have never met anyone else on horseback in three years of living here). She was unable to talk to them though, as their horses were so un-nerved to meet another horse they were terrified of it! She progressed a bit further and then over the hedge of a garden, she spotted an ostrich. Now her horse used to live next to a zoo and was not in the least phased by meeting an ostrich (I don't think my horse Eclipse would have liked it much), but the ostrich had obviously never met a horse before, and it burst out of its fence into the surrounding garden. Feeling a bit guilty (but the fence was very feeble so not too guilty) my friend hurried her horse off before she scared it any more, thinking the owners would soon retrieve it from their garden, and thought nothing more of it until the next morning.

She was doing her morning chores when a young boy arrived at her house looking for what she at first thought was an Austrian. It then dawned on her he was looking for an ostrich. Oops. Almost immediately her french neighbour arrived looking a bit flustered - there was an ostrich in his garden! Surfeit of ostriches for one weekend here! The poor boy was looking after this ostrich (Juliet) for his parents whilst they were on holiday and he was pretty upset, so the neighbour, my friend, the boy and another neighbouring farmer all set out together to catch the ostrich. Apparently the technique with ostriches is to grab them by a foot! My friend was not at all sure this was the right method and as the only thing she knew about ostriches was that they can kill you with a kick, decided to leave the actual catching to the others and just help with the general rounding up. This was not at all successful! The boy did succeed in catching the ostrich by a foot, but my friend decided it might not be the ideal catching method when it gave him a nasty kick - though not a fatal one thank goodness! After an hour and a half they all decided to call it a day, and I suspect my friend missed out on something vital because the next thing she knew, the farmer came out with his gun, vanished into the little wood where the ostrich was lurking and there was a loud bang! I think the ostrich's mistake was to escape at a weekend when all the farmers can think of is the chasse. My friend did say that the farmer was a great one for the chasse, and presumably he couldn't wait for his chance at big game hunting! I am not sure what the poor young boy was going to say to his parents when they got back from their holiday! However, this incident has earned for our friend the soubriquet of 'killer'. We spotted a rather nice plastic ostrich for her in a toyshop, lest she should forget her part in the Big Game Hunt. As it was just before Christmas we were wondering whether the ostrich would fit in the oven.

Fil