Therese Apel

Clarion Ledger

Oxford police officer Cody Pruitt and his partner Trey Lesueur had just finished washing their car when they took a call that was for the birds.

"Actually two calls came in," Pruitt said, "The first that there was a big bird walking through people's yards and they didn't know what it was, and the second was that there was an emu walking through people's yards off Henderson Road on Hillside Drive. We looked at each other like, 'We've got to see this.'"

Pruitt and Lesueur went on the emu hunt with Officer Ryan Baker and Lt. Bobby Kelly, and finally found the big bird on the side of Highway 6. As the officers maneuvered to where they could follow it, it went into some woods by the road and stopped when it found a barbed wire fence.

"It acted like it didn’t really know what to do there. So I got out and told Lt. Kelly, 'I’m going to catch that thing,' and he said, 'Go on then,'" Pruitt said.

So with a rope Baker had found on the side of the road, Pruitt approached the emu, which ended up letting him get up close and personal. Using the rope as a leash, they were able to secure the bird, but were rather at a loss for what to do next. So naturally, they called animal control.

When the animal control officer got there, it dawned on them that a regular animal control call is usually a dog or cat, or some kind of small animal, and that there really wasn't a way to transport or accommodate an emu.

"They couldn’t do anything but he had some water and dog food, so we fed it while we tried to figure out what we could do with it," Pruitt said. Pruitt's brother Barron Pruitt, also an Oxford officer, helped with the emu feeding duties, Cody Pruitt said.

At one point, though, they took the selfie that the Twitter universe loved so much, with Cody Pruitt and the emu mugging in front of the camera, and Baker looking into the distance in the back. It wasn't as easy as it looked, Pruitt said, because the emu kept laying his head on Pruitt's shoulder when he'd raise the camera.

"You could probably tell in the picture that I had gloves on in case it decided to bite me or something," he said. "It took several tries before we got a worthy picture."

But the main objective was to find out what to do with the emu. Pruitt knew of an emu farm in the county, so they got the contact information from the sheriff's department and called the owners. There was room for it at the emu farm, the owners said, if it needed to stay there until its owner could be found, or longer. The next challenge was how to get it there.

"We were trying to figure out how to transport it because we couldn’t put it in the car and have it shredding the seats or the upholstery or whatever, so it took us a while to figure out what to do," Pruitt said.

Officer David Misenhelter, the mounted unit commander, offered a horse trailer. Pruitt said the bird jumped right into the trailer and they took him to the emu farm, where there wasn't a clear way to drive the bird into the field, so Pruitt had to do it himself.

"I got in the trailer with it and picked it up, it didn’t weigh but probably 40 pounds. So I picked it up with it kicking and flailing, and I was able to set it over the fence into the field and by that point the other emus had gathered around and they went and checked each other out and all was good. No fighting, and now they’re out there mingling."

Pruitt said the call was a nice break from the norm, although there really isn't a "normal" day for a police officer.

"We never know what type of call we’re going to get next, and luckily that was a good one compared to what other officers do on a daily basis," he said. "You can go ahead and label me as an emu expert, I guess."

Though there's no clear reason why the emu crossed the road, it could possibly be because it wanted to be as famous as Oxford Police Department's Twitter page, which has gained statewide attention for their sense of humor, and national attention when they started a smack-talk war with Gainesville, Florida's police department before the Ole Miss - University of Florida game last year.

Pruitt said there's no reason to pull Gainesville into this one.

"They’d probably start posting pictures of alligators and anacondas," he said, laughing. "We probably don’t want to get in that battle."

Contact Therese Apel at tapel@gannett.com. Follow @TRex21 on Twitter.