Drunk driver tries to flee jeep crash, gets detained by nearby emu
An emu in a Malmesbury, England animal sanctuary refused to let a drunk driver escape the scene of a crime
It’s important to study history in order to, as the saying goes, ensure we’re not doomed to repeat it. For example: In the 1930s, Australian troops fought—and lost—a war against emus, described as being capable of “[facing] machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks.”
Apparently ignorant of the birds’ incredible martial skills, a single, unarmed drunk guy in England decided on Monday that he could face off against an emu after fleeing a crashed car. He did not win his fight.
As The Washington Post explains, a chef named Dean Wade spotted the drunk driver on Monday while working at Malmesbury, England’s Old Bell Hotel. Wade heard the driver’s jeep “screeching” from outside just before the vehicle flew out of control and “[smashed] into the front of an empty shop.” A passenger fled the jeep and Wade saw the driver preparing to run, too, but noted that he was unable to move very quickly since he was “’swaying’ and ‘staggering’ all over the place.”
The chef chased the drunk driver through the town “for 15 to 20 minutes” until they both ended up at an animal sanctuary that is home to a huge emu and its babies. Wade, who knows that birds can be pretty dangerous when their offspring are nearby, told the driver not to enter the enclosure. The other man responded: “I can fight emus” and then entered anyway only to be immediately attacked by the bird.
“It was stabbing his body all over,” Wade told The Washington Post. The chef said the emu’s beak beating “[caused] the man to curse and unsuccessfully attempt to ‘kung-fu-kick’ the animal away.”
Stymied by the mighty bird, the driver tried to run again after his unsuccessful kung-fu demonstration and was soon arrested after Wade got a police car’s attention. While the shop hit by the jeep was badly damaged, the others involved in the chase were left with only “minor injury,” and the emus, which can apparently withstand Australian machine gun fire, were unsurprisingly unharmed.
The article ends with a proper buddy cop conclusion, describing how Wade has been “invited to appear on national radio and TV in the UK” and that the Old Bell Hotel and the emu’s sanctuary have now entered a partnership where kitchen staff bring “bucket loads of vegetable peelings from the kitchen to the animals each day in a bid to reduce food waste.”
Truly, a happy ending.
[via Boing Boing]
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