Reunited at last! Runaway emu Bert reunited with Ernie after Pueblo Park adventure
By Michael Logerwell
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PUEBLO, Colorado (KRDO) — On Sunday, park officials at Lake Pueblo State Park saw quite an unusual bird. A bird, we’d wager, has never been spotted at the lake before. That bird was named Bert. He’s an emu, and he was on the run after escaping from a small farm just south of Pueblo.
“Somebody, I think it’s the cows, had pushed in the gate and let the birds out,” Joslyn Rafferty says. She couldn’t find any break in the fence that would’ve led to Bert the emu’s great escape.
The next time Bert was seen by the Rafferty family was on Facebook. Lake Pueblo State Park posted this photo (seen above), asking if anyone had lost their emu.
Joslyn said her son, Logan, was the only one home when Bert, the emu, went missing. He contacted friends, family, neighbors, and anyone with a phone in Southern Colorado.
“I had everybody, all the way from here to Beulah up to Pueblo. I even had people down in Colorado City, like, ‘Oh, we’ll keep an eye out,” Joslyn said. Bert didn’t make it that far, but he did make it six miles away from his home.
Joslyn said in the four years she’s had the big birds, this was the first escape. She credits the John Wayne movie Hatari! with sparking her love for emus (and ostriches, but she hasn’t added those to the farm yet). The four years of love made the escape all the more devastating and worrisome, and the eventual reunion all the sweeter.
“He literally hit my chest and put his little head, neck, and, like, threw it on me. The guy [who returned Bert] was like, Oh, this is so weird, and I thought, This is just Bert, and Bert just wanted to be hugged. So I just rubbed like you rub your dog’s cheeks,” Joslyn said.
Now Bert and Ernie are back together again, hopefully for good this time. Joslyn has added some more safety measures to ensure there is no second great emu escape.
“I’m just very proud to be part of this pueblo community and have their help and support….like, I get choked up a little bit, you know, with my babies home, but I’m very appreciative to everybody,” Joslyn said.
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