Career . 03/03/2008 11:02 AM . Jennifer Carden

The dust rises in his wake, and bystanders watch, mouths agape, as his powerful, piston-like legs pound the sod – a picture of athletic grace. Long, purposeful strides thrust him through yard after yard, and though the muscles in his athletic thighs strain, somehow the speed looks effortless. He runs, so close to flying that it seems as if he could take off at any moment.

He runs, flying past rocks and trees and fields, soaring over the Texas landscape with an ease envied by all onlookers, until –

SMACK

He hits the fence with the impact of a Mack truck, and falls, dazed, to the ground. Feathers hang in the air before floating to a resting place on and around his still form.

Having a brain the size of a walnut isn’t easy.

Neither is watching a giant ostrich slam into a fence every ten minutes. Not when you’re eight years old.

. . .

Giving directions to my house was an easy task growing up.

“Go down Peaster Highway, take a right, and look for the red barn mailbox… oh, and THE NEON YELLOW BILLBOARD with the ENORMOUS BLACK OSTRICH SILLHOUETTE.”

The billboard said “Carden Family Ostrich Ranch,” and it was notorious all along Farm Road 1885, which is probably why I didn’t get asked out a lot as an eight year-old. My dad was a smart guy, and I guess that’s how he was usually able to convince people that BAD ideas were in actuality, really GOOD, investment-worthy ideas. Proof: Our entire family was once photographed for a Christmas card wearing matching plaid outfits and holding hands. THANKS, Dad. Memories die, but photos live on forever, and when my wedding is called off because my fiancé saw me with Trigger-sized teeth, freckles and a plaid bodysuit and had a vague, foreboding feeling about our future children, I am soooo not going to be a happy camper.

I remember sitting around our kitchen table while Dad graphed the profits we would make by exponentially increasing our ostrich holdings from a comfortable nothing to a flock of 60. We had all of these great, but extremely impossible naïve ideas: My brothers could ride the ostriches, like in Swiss Family Robinson…. [ though I think they were jumping ahead to dreams of the hot girl that they would “discover” (read: invite over) on the “island” (read: back half of the ranch) and bring home to the family (read: assure her that we were down with the typhoid) ].

I was going to tame one and call her Jessica and she would be the twin sister I’d always wanted… We could sell the eggs. We could sell the feathers. We could sell the leather. Some guy in India wanted the brains… which was weird… but oh well. It sounded great.

We built a barn. We bought the birds. School children eventually started to tour our farm – more on that later – and I almost immediately started to hate my life.

The first bird we bought was promptly named Adam, of fence collision fame, and since it is not good for man to be alone, he was soon joined by his wife, Eve. The next couple to join our brood was Abraham and Sarah, who were intended to birth a great nation of dumb animals. They lived in a little paradise we called “The Barn,” which we built about a fourth of a mile away from my house. My dad began to write for ostrich magazines, travel to foreign countries for meetings and speak at national ostrich conventions across the country.

Yeah. I know. There actually WERE ostrich conventions and magazines. Poor, deluded little 40 year-old wannabe farmers. If only they’d known that ostrich skin oil ( actual product ) was never going to be the wave of the future…

So the ostrich ball rolled on, and at one point, I attended several conventions with my dad where I was forced to wear an ostrich costume while serving hors d’oeuvres. This costume featured a 20lb. feathered body with a tail, neck and head attached, complimented by pink sparkly, tights. Oh yeah. Hot. And no, I will never put it on again, and also no, there are no pictures floating around, so step away from the Google.

Walking around pink-legged with jumbo, child-bearing cardboard hips and an ostrich head dragging the ground front of me, serving munchies and praying to the God of CPS and Human Decency that that day would end… yeah, I think that’s probably the time when I began to truly dislike our “feathered friends.”

So yeah, I would like to address one common misconception about ostriches. Some people seem to think that they are deceptively intelligent animals. And some people also believe in Scientology, in which we have ALIENS LIVING INSIDE US. The religion… is a Will Smith movie, my friends. If I were choose a Will Smith movie on which to base my cult, I’d go with Bad Boys, but that’s just me.

For those listening at home: Tom Cruise is insane and ostriches are idiots.

They have brains several times smaller than their toenails, which is a major problem when one considers that they are also the only animal that can kill a lion. So basically, picture a very angry, strong, feathered man with razor-sharp lead fingernails, wheels for legs and an IQ range somewhere in the negative numbers. Or like, Big Bird, without the felt covering… on steroids.. and Chapelle-amounts of crack… after someone just gave him a wedgie….

Thaaat’s the idea.

Their complete lack of brain power leads them to do stupid things, such as attempting to eat nails, trees, their own children, truck bumpers and human hair. I actually had to clear an entire pen of twigs one time, because Cain, one of our later acquisitions, had gotten a whole tree branch lodged his throat.

The ostriches are also known for running at great rates – they can reach over 70 miles per hour – and running into fences, walls and barns at great rates. We had to install rubber fencing at our ranch to keep them from dropping like flies. Despite this precaution, they managed to run into trees, our barn, and each other on multiple occasions. EACH OTHER. The rubber fences, we were advised, could not contain a 90 degree sharp corner, because the birds would often walk into the corner, and, since they couldn’t muster the mental capabilities that might have directed them to TURN AROUND, think they had been trapped in a box, freak out, molt, and have a tiny little brain aneurism right there.

After about a year of our ostrich business, school children began visiting our farm to take tours. Evidently our farm was a spectacle to so-called “city folk,” since we kept bees, ostriches, dogs, horses, cows, snakes and a variety of unnamed animals. At one point a child actually asked my mom if we “made our own furniture.” And she was my COUSIN!

Those weren’t the best times of my life, but it was fun being all, “Hey, Emily, step back – we haven’t fed these guys in fourteen days and their tongue is long enough to devour your eyes from ten feet away.” You saw some wide eyes after those comments.

But yeah, the birds totally didn’t have any redeeming value. They weren’t good pets, because they were so angry at God for giving ‘em wings but also giving ‘em J-Lo’s hips so they couldn’t fly ( my theory ) that they’d attack you if you even came close. We constantly had to extricate them from the fencing, keep them from eating anvils, and tearing holes in the barn with their nails. Not to mention the mental anguish we went through as “those kids with the humongous ugly birds.”

Which is why we got rid of them. Or maybe they all died. Or my dad finally realized they were a lousy investment. That part of the story is a little cloudy, but my point is this:

Never farm an animal that can gore you to death with its toenail.

Jennifer Carden is the editor-in-chief of Kritik. She has almost recovered from growing up.


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