SHIGA (TR) – Police in Moriyama City captured a massive flightless bird following a two-hour pursuit through a residential neighborhood on Wednesday morning.
The apprehension took place after panicked locals flooded emergency lines with reports of a wandering ostrich, reports Nippon News Network (Sep. 23).
“I just called the police,” one frightened bystander was heard saying as the giant bird suddenly appeared in the quiet streets of Moriyama, prompting residents to back away in fear. Dispatchers received multiple emergency calls from distressed citizens, with reports claiming “an ostrich is wandering around” and “an ostrich just ran by.”
The two-meter-tall avian initially evaded authorities, slipping away into the streets after police made their first sighting. Approximately two hours after the initial emergency calls, officers finally cornered the bird on the grounds of a local apartment complex.
A tense capture operation unfolded under police supervision. “It’s thrashing around a bit,” one official noted, before the massive bird was carefully wrangled through a narrow passageway and successfully loaded into a waiting vehicle.
Following the dramatic apprehension, authorities revealed the “ostrich” was in fact an emu. The animal was identified as a juvenile, less than one year old, which had managed to escape from a nearby mobile zoo.
“The door is usually closed, but it just happened to be open today, and it got out,” the emu’s keeper said following the incident. “The most important thing is that nobody was hurt.”
Police are currently investigating the exact circumstances that led to the animal’s escape.
