A 32-year-old emu escapes from a farm in Finland
In the Finnish municipality of Mäntyharju, an emu nicknamed Herra Goo escaped from an enclosure at the Kuvalan tila farm on Saturday. The bird, which jumped over a fence about two metres high, has not yet been caught, YLE News reports.
The bird was seen on a road
Herra Goo has lived all his life in the village of Kukkonkorpi in Mäntyharju. Farm entrepreneurs Janne and Heidi Haajanen do not know what prompted the bird to leave the enclosure. According to them, emus are not currently in their mating season.
The emu is about 150 centimetres tall and weighs 45 kilograms. The entrepreneurs describe him as 32 years old and note that this is a respectable age for the species, as emus usually do not live much longer than 30 years.
Local resident Tapio Hämäläinen saw the bird on a secondary road a few kilometres from the farm and recorded it on video. He quickly recognized the emu because he lives nearby and knew that Herra Goo was kept at Kuvalan tila.
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Entrepreneurs ask people not to chase the emu
According to Janne Haajanen, the bird can survive for some time in Finnish nature, although emus originate from Australia, because food is available to it. The entrepreneurs hope to receive reports about Herra Goo's whereabouts so they can return him to the farm alive.
According to available information, the emu headed toward Repovesi National Park. No organized search groups have been formed in the village of Kukkonkorpi. Heidi Haajanen urged people who spot the bird near their home or summer cottage to notify the entrepreneurs and not try to chase it: emus can run at speeds of 50–60 kilometres per hour.
Emus in Finland
The emu is the world's second-largest bird after the ostrich. In the 1990s and early 2000s, larger-scale breeding of ostriches and emus was considered in Finland, and Kuvalan tila once kept more than 200 emus. Today, only a few hundred ostriches and even fewer emus remain in the country; Herra Goo had lived on the farm for a long time as the only emu among chickens.
