Birdwatching in Australia - Big Bird Gone Bad (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine February 2003

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Big Bird Gone Bad (Cont.)

BEFORE I LEAVE, Cameron offers two more beers, and two suggestions on where to actually spot a cassowary.

"Well, you can go right on out across the road there," he says, pointing to the end of their lot. "That's all lowland rainforest, right to the coast. Walk there, down to the swamps, and you'll get a real taste for it, all right. You know how to handle leeches, I reckon?"

This option is appealing, but since cassowaries, like people, prefer paths to thickets, the odds of buttonholing a bird in the bush are vanishingly small. I choose instead a flat six-mile track traversing Licuala State Forest Park, where the giant fan palms and prehistoric cycad trees start a few feet from the parking lot.

Enormous trees breach the canopy. Rain roars against the leaves and pools in muddy pits tusked by feral pigs, and the air carries a spunky, living scent. Sometimes there's a rustling in the bush, but each time I turn, nothing's there. And frankly, at this point, I'm not sure I want anything to be.

It's then that I realize that the black shape walking toward me is not a hiker. At 20 feet, it's moving forward in the deliberate manner of movie monsters.

At 15 feet, the colors on its neck are vivid and neon, its head is capped by a casque of lopsided bone, its glossy black body sprouts a foliage of quills. It picks up each giant foot and places it delicately ahead, first one, then the other, like a huge marionette. Ten feet now, then five, and the cassowary stops to regard me sideways, the velociraptor equivalent of the hairy eyeball. Is it angry, drunk, mean? Is it surprised? Hungry?

The questions stop as it again moves toward me, this time faster. Forget the theories; it's time to walk. Backward. Slowly. I keep the distance, remembering the pecked and chased and butted.

"Don't dare run," Bruce had suggested. "And never turn your back on a bird." But, really, how could anyone turn away? The cassowary pecks the ground, gobbling fat worms with quick chops of its beak. Its legs are turquoise and muscular, its wedge toes are finished with those famous curved razors of spike and claw, and I have no idea what to do. Look for a tree? Suddenly they all seem desperately flimsy for the job. Run? Not on your life.

Instead, I take one deliberate step to the side, offering the cassowary the trail. The bird cocks its head, then struts past. It is real. Then, just as quickly, it is gone.

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