\n Sightings of the large, flightless bird near Peacehaven were shared online on the morning of August 9, but owner Virgil Szilagyi-Ruggins quickly tracked it down and returned it home.\n<\/p>\n
\n Mr Szilagyi-Ruggins, who owns a sustainable logistics company, said the bird had escaped through a weak point in an old fence at the private farm near Peacehaven where his eight emus live.\n<\/p>\n
\n He told The Argus: \u201cOnce the Facebook posts and calls started coming in, I counted mine and realised one was missing.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI went to find the escape route and found the emu 15 minutes later on the neighbour’s field.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n The moment the escaped emu was found on land neighbouring its 20-acre home. (Image: Virgil Szilagyi-Ruggins)\n<\/p>\n
\n The escaped bird was recovered without injury after Mr Szilagyi-Ruggins and his partner were able to call it over and catch it.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cLuckily, our emus are tame, and so once I found him, I could call him close, and with my partner, we could catch him with a net in an instant,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Mr Szilagyi-Ruggins said he was introduced to keeping emus while growing up in Hungary and has cared for the animals ever since.\n<\/p>\n
\n Mr Szilagyi-Ruggins says the birds are “very tame, gentle, and curious.” (Image: Virgil Szilagyi-Ruggins)\n<\/p>\n
\n He added that the distance travelled by the escaped emu was not unusual for the species.\n<\/p>\n
\n The 20-acre site where they now live had been unused for at least a decade before the emus arrived, and Mr Szilagyi-Ruggins said work has been ongoing to repair and replace ageing sections of fencing.\n<\/p>\n
\n The escaped emu found a weak spot where an old fence post had collapsed and “simply walked out,” he said, before wandering onto neighbouring land.\n<\/p>\n
\n The section of fencing the emu escaped through has now been replaced.\n<\/p>\n
\n Native to Australia, emus are the world’s second-largest living bird after the ostrich and can grow to almost six feet tall.\n<\/p>\n
\n Mr Szilagyi-Ruggins, who describes emus as “very tame, gentle and curious animals,” hopes to one day create opportunities for people to meet and learn about them.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cEmus can live for around 50 years, so in a way we all have time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sightings of the large, flightless bird near Peacehaven were shared online on the morning of August 9, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-735388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=735388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}