Catching giant birds is man's specialty

WICHITA, Kan. -- How do you catch a 125-pound, nearly 6-foot-tall emu running loose in your city?

Get Ron Pitschmann.

He knows how to subdue the flightless big birds from Australia. He showed that recently in the Wichita suburb of Bel Aire.

Pitschmann will tell you to do it like this: Herd it. Tackle it from behind. Hold its legs together so it won't take off.

And, watch out!

An emu -- a smaller cousin of the ostrich -- can kick with its thick, clawed feet.

At 5-foot-6 and 140 pounds, the 46-year-old Pitschmann isn't much bigger than the emu he tackled.

Pitschmann is an elementary school vice principal and child care director at Sunrise Christian Academy in Bel Aire.

Here's how he became an emu tackler:

About 11:15 a.m. on a recent Monday, Bel Aire police received a report of a large, gray-brown feathered creature on the lam. Pitschmann assumed it was one of the two emus that belong to the school.

So he and two other academy employees joined the pursuit.

After trying to catch the emu with landscape netting and later hem it in with barbed wire fencing, Pitschmann and another man cornered it at a fence.

Pitschmann tackled it. The other man went for the head.

Pitschmann ended up with cuts. Emus have sharp, scaly skin on their legs. The emu also raked his arm along the barbed wire. The emu suffered its share of minor cuts.

They tied its feet, loaded it into a van, took it to the school and put it in the 10-acre enclosure.

But while looking for the hole in the fencing where the emu escaped, they realized it wasn't their emu. Both of their emus were already in the enclosure.

"I'm hoping that someone will see the news story and say: 'Hey! That's my emu!'"