A driver traveling the A381 outside Salcombe, Devon, pulled over this week to help a farmer corner an emu that had slipped its enclosure — and ended up filming the bird win instead.
James Barker, 46, said he spotted the large flightless bird loose on the rural road and stopped to let a man from the nearby farm try to catch it. What followed was a roughly 20-second tussle: the man got his arms around the emu and wrestled it to the ground, only for the bird to twist free, headbutt him, and scramble back onto its feet.
"I saw the bird on the road, so I pulled up to let the guy get hold of it — it was too funny not to try and film," Barker told UPI. Someone off-camera can be heard shouting "emu down, emu down!" as the pair grapple in the road.
The emu, known locally as Side Neck for the way its head bobs when it runs, didn't need any more help after that. It climbed back to its feet, trotted past a watching alpaca at the farm gate, and let itself back onto the property. "He was just trying to get back — it was hysterical. As soon as it walked back in he went over and closed the gate," Barker said, according to a separate account of the encounter that also quoted him.
The clip has since racked up more than two million views online, turning a routine farm mishap into one of the more-watched animal videos of the season. Emus are notoriously difficult to recapture once loose — they can sprint close to 30 mph and kick hard enough to injure an unprepared handler — which may explain why this particular standoff ended less like a rescue and more like a draw, with the bird getting the better of the exchange by most viewers' scoring.
Neither Barker nor the farm's owner reported any injuries from the encounter, and the bird was back behind its gate within minutes of the scuffle ending.