In which Travis rides an ostrich

Trip Start Sep 17, 2007

260

272

Trip End Oct 08, 2008

Loading Map

Map your own trip!

Map Options

Show trip route

Hide lines

Flag of South Africa Oudtshoorn, Western Cape, South Africa
Friday, September 26, 2008

Oudtshoorn is the ostrich capital of the world. Some call this a dubious distinction, but I think it's awesome. For some reason, in this little corner of South Africa, a bunch of farmers decided that it would be a good idea to keep herds of domesticated ostriches. Now, when ostriches are domesticated, you can do loads of stuff with them. You can ride them, eat them, breed them, and harvest their feathers (domesticated ostriches can't molt by themselves for some reason). Fortunes were made in a few short years while women thought that wearing ostrich feathers in their hair was all that, and then they were lost when that style went out of fashion (as they all do, eventually). Still, South Africa loves its ostrich steaks and biltong, ostrich feather dusters, and ostrich tourism.

Around Oudtshoorn there are four show farms and several more real farms where you can see these big birds in action

. For our field trip, Travis and I decided to rent bicycles from our hostel and cycle the 15 km up to Cango Farms. In retrospect, this one is probably easiest to find, but doesn't have the most informative tour. Essentially it was a series of photo ops, but we did learn some stuff.

First, we were late, and apparently the rest of the afternoon was full of booked tours, so we latched on to the one that had just started. Fortunately were were just in time to see a hatching ostrich. I thought that we would get to watch it come out and be a baby, but it actually takes ostriches three days to hatch, and if you help them they'll break their legs and be put down, rather like a horse. But we did see little feathers coming out of an egg (mysteriously, because there was no beak where the egg had been cracked). Then we saw a giant spider, which some of the men seemed to think was more interesting than ostriches.

Next we met Betty, a young female ostrich who would teach us all about being an ostrich. Betty was, of course, gray, because only male ostriches are black and white. We learned that that think you think is the knee is actually the ankle, the knee is where the hip ought to be, and the hip is hidden somewhere under the bulk of the ostrich. We got the opportunity to play all kinds of tricks with Betty - kisses, hugs, feeding, petting

. An ostrich kiss is much more painful than a giraffe kiss, and the hug is a bit impersonal. But it was all fun. Of course, ostrichs are not only unique because they are the largest birds on earth, or because they're flightless (if you get a good look at the wings you can see exactly why this is so - they're little strings) - they are the only birds to have two toes. This is one reason for their being known as camel birds. The big toe is for carrying weight and ripping your chest open, while the little toe is for balance. Oh, and their brains are smaller than one of their eyes. An ostrich eye is approximately 80 grams, while the brain is 60 g.

Moving on to mating and laying. Fabulous factoid: when male ostriches are ready to mate, their beaks and shins turn red. This is a warning that your breast is in danger - they are very aggressive. As for females, when they get to be sexually mature, they lay an experiment egg, which is quite small. They they eat it for the calcium before mating properly and laying eggs. When they lay a clutch, each egg is fertilized individually and laid. This means that eggs might be months apart in the same clutch, but the amazing thing is that they all hatch at the same time. Also, females can tell which of their eggs are going to bear chicks and will eat the ones that aren't for their nutritive value. As for ostrich chicks, as long as they're put with any adult ostrich they'll be safe and grow, but they're highly susceptible to stress and noise, in which case they'll drop dead. Sometimes it's amazing that anything survives in this world. Babies are cute little spotty things.

Now I suppose is that moment we were all looking forward to. Travis rides an ostrich.

In order to keep the ostrich docile the keepers will put a goofy sack over its head

. With this in place you can lead an ostrich just about anywhere. Take the hood off and the ostrich is crazy once again. After everyone was given the opportunity to sit on the ostrich (for which there is no weight limit), we were given the opportunity to ride the ostrich. For this, the weight limit is 75 kg. Last I checked, I weighed in at 72, so I had a go, but I know we were all expecting that of me. Seeing our dignified Travis jolting around on an ostrich, however, seemed like just the thing, so I made him do it. Not that he didn't want to, but he can be shy. After the inexperienced rides, the handlers climbed on and demonstrated how to turn an ostrich and stop it by twisting its neck about. They'll never be practical beasts of burden, but they will never not be entertaining. Maybe next time we can even see an ostrich race. I have no idea where to find one, but there must be some in this ostrich capital.

Erin