I can remember once coming face to face with a free-roaming emu years ago in Sydney zoo. You are strongly warned not to approach them too closely because they can be pretty violent creatures, but once I had caught its eye, I found its irate, staring face absolutely riveting. Because once you look one right in the eye, you have a sudden sense of what the effect has been on the creature of having all the disadvantages of being a bird—absurd posture, a hopelessly scruffy covering of useless feathers, and two useless limbs—without actually being able to do the thing that birds should be able to
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