Police, Animal Control Corral 4 Emus in Round Rock Neighborhood

The red-tailed hawk is native to Texas. So is the Barn Owl, and the orange-crowned warbler.

But not the Emu.

Don’t tell that to Emmit, Huey, Dewey and Louie — the four emus that have wandered in Forest Creek for the past 24 hours.

At 2 p.m. Thursday the Round Rock police were notified that four emus were out for a stroll in the Round Rock neighborhood. Friday afternoon, with the help of Williamson County officials, the birds were safely contained, Angelique Myers, a spokeswoman for the Round Rock police, told Patch.

This all begs the question, who let the emus out?

It’s currently unkown, but the owner of the birds — Lori Kessler — came home from work Thursday to find the gate to her fenced-in backyard opened, she told KVUE.

Kessler said she immediately called the police and animal control, who were at first unsuccessful in capturing the large, flightless birds. It’s a tough task — the emu can weight more than 80 pounds and run 30 miles-per-hour.

“They’re impossible to catch. The only thing that we could do is try to herd them back. So if we can find them and I have like 10 people to help me herd them back home, then that’s the only thing that will work,” Kessler told KVUE.

But Friday’s efforts to reign in the emus were a success. Williamson County livestock deputies were able to corral the emus into a yard on Valley Creek Drive, just east of Round Rock. Kessler took over from there, reported the Austin American-Statesman. She picked each emu up one-by-one, put a sock over their heads to calm them down and loaded them into the deputies’ truck.

Kessler has owned the emus for less than a year after her husband gave them to her as a gift. He bought them off Craigslist.

“They’re characters,” Kessler told KVUE. “I’ve got baby pools in the backyard where they plop down and they do this little Zumba dance in the morning when they’re running around in the yard.”

[Photos courtesy of Round Rock Police]