The Mail-Order Rhea

This story came to me years ago from my friend Nick, a lovely man who lived in a magical compound with many kinds of animals. He was near the ocean, south of San Francisco.  His large walled yard was a short walk to the beach. I remember him walking at the water's edge under a summer sky with his resident goat. He had built an aviary for his many birds, including a very vocal scarlet macaw. Cats, dogs, ducks, and chickens roamed the place, many of them rescued in one way or another. A glorious cacophony of animal voices.

He'd be the last person to compare himself to St. Francis, but I could see the resemblance.

Nick’s partner worked for a pet store and learned of a well-meaning but very low- functioning woman who had acquired a rhea, a South American ostrich relative. The bird was confined to a tiny back porch. As Nick described it, with his beautiful, lilting Kentucky accent, “The poor soul had answered a magazine ad and spent her entire SSI check to buy a rhea egg.”

A rhea can grow to five feet in height and fifty pounds. An animal too large and too wild to keep cruelly constricted in a very small space.

Miraculously, she had been able to keep it warm enough to hatch and had fed the chick bags of dog food. When Nick and his partner went to see her, the rhea had become a huge bird which was imprisoned in a space about five feet square, and could not stand on her own legs. They persuaded the woman to let them take Miss Rhea and care for her.

On their way home (I picture the two of them in the front seat of their car, with the rhea in the back seat), they discussed how to make her healthy.

Their solution was elegant: they ran a long clothesline between two posts. From this, they suspended a sling attached to a pulley, which supported the rhea’s body but kept her feet barely off the ground. She was forced to reach down with her legs to take the weight off her belly.  As she was able to touch the ground, they raised the sling so that she had to reach further. Her legs became stronger, soon strong enough to support her. She discovered that she could move, and in a short time, she was able to run back and forth along the length of the clothesline. As Nick described it, “She would turn her head like a ballerina, and her body would follow in that direction.” Gracefully, she ran back and forth, loving her new strong legs!

I don’t know the end of the story. Knowing Nick’s thoughtful character, I suppose they found a home for her on a nature preserve, or in the care of someone who had huge acreage up in the hills. I am simply entranced by the vision of this magnificent animal learning to escape the confines of a stunted body and becoming the huge, graceful bird that she was meant to be. I picture her running free under the California sky, without a single memory of her incarceration.
 © Janice Mastin-Kamps 2010