The “deadliest bird in the world” pursued a gamekeeper in Australia as he escaped on a quad bike.
In north Queensland’s Wuthathi National Park, senior custodian Cameron Wilson was surveying a track when he “had a feeling that something was following him,” according to a post on the Wuthathi Aboriginal Corporation Facebook page.
“When he spun around, he saw the determined cassowary chasing him at full speed.”
What are Cassowaries?
Cassowaries can cause lethal damage with their long, sharp claws on their feet and muscular legs.
Thus, it was only natural that Cameron floored it in an effort to get away from the obstinate bird; nonetheless, he wound up sliding out after hitting an embankment.
Before his coworkers could help him, he had “a nervous seven minutes one on one” with the enormous bird.
According to Ranger Clayton Enoch, “Cam was signalling at me to slow down and I was like, ‘What for?'”
“Then he held two fingers up to his eyes and pointed behind me and I saw the cassowary in the scrub. I thought, ‘Holy s**t.'”
The two made an effort to keep the bird at a distance, but it once more showed that it could keep up with a quad bike.
Clayton recalled, “He simply wouldn’t let us leave.”
“It was bizarre, I got smacked by a branch with green ants crawling all over me at the same time.
“He was flying alongside me and he let this pterodactyl-like noise out of his beak.
“The casque on top of his head was close to 30 centimetres long. He was a really healthy bird.”
He added: “I’ve been working in wildlife for years and I’ve never seen anything like that. It amazed me because I didn’t realise how fast they could run.”