MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota hunter and his dog got a lot more bird than they were seeking when they came across an emu in the woods recently.

The story got more bizarre — and even tense at times — when the bird wouldn’t stop following the man and even pecked at his shotgun.

In the meantime, the emu, apparently one of two captive birds to have escaped, remains at large.

Here’s the story:

Mike Siebert of Oakdale was taking his nearly 2-year-old dog Griffin, a Brittany, on the dog’s first ruffed grouse hunt Saturday, Sept. 26, south of McGrath in east-central Minnesota. On the morning hunt, he heard two grouse flush, and Griffin had a close call with a porcupine — surely the most dramatic moment of the day.

“We covered about 10 miles and it was warm, so we were pretty much done with hunting for the day,” Siebert recalled in a phone interview. “I was eating lunch at my truck. A lady came by with her daughter and said, ‘Have you seen an emu? I lost two but rounded one up.’ I gave her a funny look and said no.”

The woman gave Siebert her cell phone number, and he was soon driving home.

But a short ways down the road he spotted a narrow trail he hadn’t seen before. It looked inviting, so he and Griffin started walking along the trail.

Where the trail crosses a wide ATV trail, Griffin went on point, freezing in place to indicate he had located a bird close by.

Siebert rounded a corner and there it was: An emu the same height as him.

“Was I surprised? I was looking for grouse-sized birds, so, yeah. But then I remembered the woman. I think my first words to me and my dog was: ‘There’s the emu.’ ”

Griffin promptly retreated. “He was pretty uncomfortable. I don’t know anything about emus, and it kind of freaked me out. ... Well, I should say ‘she.’ I found out her name was Penelope.”

Penelope approached, quickly getting too close for comfort. Siebert noticed the size of her feet, which appeared (and are) capable of inflicting damage.

He laid his gun on the ground and grabbed a 6-foot stick that he used to keep the bird at bay while pondering his next move.

“She sees my shotgun on the ground and starts pecking at my gun. She pecked like 40 to 50 times. I was worried she was going to peck off the safety and the gun would fire.”

Jousting Penelope with his stick, Siebert regained control of his firearm, called the emu’s owner and began walking back toward the car with Griffin — and Penelope close behind. Very close.

“She was friendly as far as emus go, I guess. She kept following me and at one point I turned around and her head was right next to mine … like I could have head-butted her. So I used that stick again to keep some distance.

“To top it all off, while the bird was following me, I flushed two grouse. They would have been easy shots, too, but I didn’t shoot. I didn’t want to scare the emu off.”

The plan was to lure Penelope back to the road, but the trail narrowed and became overgrown. “I guess they don’t like things brushing up against their feathers or something because she stopped following.”

Siebert met the woman and her daughter at the trailhead, and they all headed back down the trail in search of Penelope, who was nowhere to be found.

“We walked back to the spot where I first saw her, on the ATV trail, and a guy on an electric motorbike rides up and says, ‘Have you seen that emu?!’ ”

As of last week, Penelope was still at large, Siebert said.

____

©2026 The Minnesota Star Tribune. Visit startribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC