The big bird scare
Iwas watching a cartoon in the dentist office while waiting for my wife. A scene with a lot of animals came on, and in it was a group of some of the most awful birds that I had ever seen. It brought back an incident that happened back in the 1960s.
I was called to see one of my units on Cotton Avenue, which is down close to the river in East Rome.
The woods come right up to the streets. We were always getting calls about strange animals in that area. I was told by one old fellow who had lived there all his life that he had seen a werewolf along the river.
I checked out of the patrol car and went to the back yard where the officers were. They were talking to a very small old lady. One of the officers came over to me and said, “We will take a report but what she says in unbelievable.” I walked over to the officer talking to the lady and he said, “This is my supervisor, tell him what you saw.”
It seemed that she had heard a noise in her back yard. She went out to see what it was. There in her garden was the biggest bird that she had ever seen. It stood a good 6 feet tall, with a long neck and a small head. It had a funny-looking beak. When she tried to shoo it out of her garden it came running toward her. She ran in the house and called the police.
I walked back around in front of the house to where the other officer stood. “Well, Lieutenant, what do you think?” I shook my head, saying, “I have no idea what she saw. Whatever it was it scared her. Come on, let’s look around and see if there are any tracks or anything it left behind.”
We walked down the road to the woods. We started back when the other officer reached down and picked up a feather from the ground. We looked at it but didn’t know what kind of bird had lost it. It was a feather like I had never seen before. He held the feather, and we looked at it. “You don’t suppose that the old lady really saw a bird as big as she said?”
I shook my head, not knowing or having any idea what she had seen.
Back in the patrol car, I started down Hardy Avenue. I was flagged down by a young boy on a bicycle. He was all excited. I calmed him down and found out he was in the woods when he came up on a big bird. He had started back toward Hardy Avenue when it saw him. It ran after him until he got out of the woods.
I called the other patrol car, telling them what the young boy had said. I went up to the spot where he said he had seen the bird. The other car came up, and we searched the area. We found nothing that would indicate that a big bird was in the area. I went in to the station and signed out my shift for the day.
I went in the next morning to find that the second shift had received several calls the day before on the big bird. I left out from the station, thinking this will be one of them days when you run yourself crazy trying to find a 6 foot bird with a long neck. I was on Broad Street when the first call came in. I got there and realized that it was the woods behind the Coosa Country Club. I drove into the woods as far as I could get. Stopping the car, I got out. I heard something in the bushes and walked over to get a look.
There he stood, all 6 feet of him with his long neck. I laughed to myself, thinking the old lady was right. I called for the other car to come to where I was. It wasn’t just a few minutes before they pulled in.
I pointed to the big bird, who was busy eating some kind of grass. “How are we going to get him?” one of the officers asked. I called headquarters to tell them what we had. They got in touch with Animal Control, who sent someone to try to capture the bird.
When they got there I was surprised to see one of them take out a rope. The bird was not paying any attention to us. He was busy having his breakfast. The Animal Control officer walked over and tossed the rope over his head.
He went wild, but the officer held the rope until he settled down. They opened the back of the truck and put in a pan of grain. It was like leading a baby to ice cream. He walked into the truck and began to eat.
With the big bird in custody I went down to the lady’s house on Cotton Avenue and told her that we had captured it. We talked for a few minutes then I left. I assured her that we hadn’t thought she was crazy when she was telling us about the big bird. It had sounded like a science fiction story.
When I looked at the big bird there in the woods I had gotten a good laugh. Stop and think what you would do if you had never seen an ostrich and here come one running at you. I know exactly what I would do. I would move out as fast as possible, heading for greener pastures.