Authorities have finally apprehended the 150-pound emu who’s been running wild in Nanaimo, B.C. since last weekend.
Animal control officers cooked Lucy the emu’s goose Friday evening after he was spotted in a thicket behind Vancouver Island University.
CTV’s Chopper 9 got a bird’s-eye view as the 15-year-old animal was loaded into a truck to be returned to his relieved owner.
Lucy flew the coop on Sunday and has been spotted numerous times since, most memorably when it was filmed chasing a dog across a Nanaimo lawn.
The length of the capture is no surprise given that emus can zip around at about 70 kilometres per hour.
Lucy’s story became a social media sensation, inspiring hundreds of tweets and even a map tracking every sighting of the flightless bird.
Owner Tim Genner said Lucy never posed any danger to the public because he was declawed at birth.
Genner said he opted for the procedure because emus are known to disembowel each other during mating season.
“My concerns are not so much for the public but for the bird: that it may get hit by a car, logging truck or somebody just mistaking it for something that might hurt them, which it won’t do,” he told CTV News earlier this week.
Despite Lucy’s name, Genner confirmed the bird is male.
