Brooke Forbes

Growing baby dinosaurs are walking at my feet. 

Their striped cocoon-like bodies, a feathered pod on legs, with stretched necks and three tiered-feet, run forward with anticipation of our greeting.

Are they happy to see me, or do they associate humans with food, or both, I wonder?

Chick and Chuck, we have called them – 

names that point toward their baby status, and like their stripey markings, are also something they will soon grow out of. 

What a pleasure to watch them morph from infants to adults –

Orphans through a suspected human-abducted egg – misplaced from their Emu mother and instead brought to life under a heat lamp. 

Sometimes Chick and Chuck roam freely on the property. 

I have found them at the gate, one step behind Uncle Lou Lou, who towers over them, sometimes guiding and nurturing and sometimes agitated by his new-found familiar role. 

Watch out for Uncle Lou Lou, Chick and Chuck! Don’t get under his feet!

They learn quickly and dart away, mouths open from the run across the property, hiding in my car shadow for shade. 

Reunited, shortly, with their human mother 

who takes them back to shelter and water – 

I am watching the growth of interconnectedness between nature and human-assistance – with the hope, one day, Chick and Chuck will no longer need our ever-present guidance.

I am watching the loss of playful innocence and the assumption of Emu roles and status – the morphing from fuzzy chick to long featured beauty – ready to take a stand, marking time and place, in this connection between time-immortal and time-present day. 

After all 

It’s a place in history – 

For a species, 

To continue to survive.