The Emu Has Landed (in India)
Thousands of miles from its Australian home, vast numbers of not-terribly-tasty bird are left in the lurch, victims of a subcontinental swindle.
BY JOHN UPTON
Published: March-April 2014
On a moonlit night, 150 miles from the Arabian Sea, a truck screeched to a halt along a monsoon-drenched highway. A farmer emerged from his wooden hut to investigate: Men's hushed voices. Clanking, as clandestine cargo was unloaded. The roar of the engine and the fading throttle of scofflaws as they fled the scene of an unusual wildlife crime. Then the tranquility of the jungle returned, ringing until dawn--a dulcet cacophony of dripping water, insects, and wailing jackals.
Half a mile away, Vajesing Mama awoke in the same house where he had been born more than six decades earlier. During a lifetime in Narukot Village, Mama had watched a veritable Jungle Book strut past his humble house--everything from peacocks to wild boar, panthers, and sloth bears. But he had never seen anything like the gangly gray birds that sashayed through the steamy rain on that August morning.
"Nobody in the village knew what they were," Mama said during a visit late last year. "Everybody came and looked."
Mama was staring at about a dozen immature emus, standing as tall as preteen children. He was baffled. His best guess was that they were some kind of vulture. But he scoffed when asked whether he felt any fear. "We were not scared," he said, speaking in Gujarati, the main language in this Indian state of Gujarat, where jungles, farms, and diamond traders abound. "But everybody stayed back."
Emus, those hardy ratites native to the Australian outback, first made an appearance in India in the 1990s. Since 2006 they have been pawns in what began as a farming fad and turned into a Ponzi scheme; over the years it has spread north from Tamil Nadu to Gujarat and beyond. . . .
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