Bonjour, Big Birds!
Today, your Accident-Attracting Antipodean Auteur once again spent some time being taught some fucked up life lessons at the School of Randomly Bizarre Happenings, which I have been unwilling enrolled in for some time now, and which apparently holds weekend classes. Here's some highlights from today's curriculum of chaos.
* If you leave your paper satchel of take-away McDonald's food on an outside table to go return some excess change given unto you by the Lard Lackey in Charge, this apparently gives tacit permission to an emu to steal—and consume—your lunch in your temporary absence.
"IS IT TOO LATE IN THE DAY FOR A SAUSAGE MCMUFFIN?"* Emus like eating paper lunch sacks with the lunch inside, but will violently reject large Cokes; I guess they don't appreciate them being watered down so much either.
* Having a petting zoo in the children's playground of a fast-food restaurant is a totally good idea and not at all an invitation for calamity, especially if the zoo contains a six-foot-tall flightless bird that is not tethered in any way, is clearly completely at ease with the shrieking children attempting to grab its neck or feet, is not at all freaked out by the smell of its smaller cousins frying at the KFC next door, and has the brainpower of a salad onion.
* If pursued by an irate (and bemused, and by this point quite hungry) blue-haired hominid muttering a mix of calming words and profanities, your average emu will run across a parking lot, and, given the option between remaining in the parking lot or causing chaos in the drive-thru, will take the obvious choice.
* Drive-thru cashiers are oddly unappreciative of panicked flightless birds the size of a person sticking their heads through the drive-thru window and pecking them. Nor are they very understanding of blue-haired hominids chasing after said bird, even when you point out you're only trying to help, and said bird does not actually belong to you, despite similar head plumage.
* Drive-thru patrons will whoop and honk their car-horns at runaway emus. Oddly, this does very little to calm the animals down.
* When cornered, emus will stand their ground and hiss. Very loudly. This is a suprisingly effective deterent.
* Aforementioned hissing may or may not be followed by explosive regurgitation of the lunch you just paid for them to eat in front of you.
* McDonald's pickles look just as appetising after yo-yoing in the crop of an irate Australian bird as they do in your average Big Mac.
* Large paper bags placed over the head of an emu will convince the bird the danger is over as it can no longer be seen, and the bird will relax nigh-instantaneously. Truly, these creatures make Sarah Palin look like Stephen Hawking.
* You can't get a refund or a replacement meal at a fast-food restaurant by citing "Act of Bird."