The pasture northwest of Oklahoma City belonged to a fellow described as “an oilman always on the lookout for The Next Big Thing.”
The Next Big Thing was in that pasture. It was actually several Next Big Things. It was birds. Flightless birds. Birds bigger than Fiat 500s. It was ostriches.
We wandered over to the fence to get a closer look, and the giant birds wandered over to the fence, too, so as to get a better look at us. They were intimidating. And they showed no sign of burying their heads in the tightly packed Sooner soil.
One tried to snatch the earring off my wife’s right ear lobe. He seemed to be all eyeballs and tiny beak. So, we retreated while the guy talked on in a salesman-like way about the vast wealth to be made off the garrulous immigrants strutting around inspecting people’s ears.
As with cattle, he was saying, you could expect to “harvest” multiple products from these two-legged critters. But, more than what you might get off a steer. Lots more.
Hide for boots and belts. Oil for skin care and tonics. Meat for cooking and eating (“Tastes just like prime beef. Not chicken!”) Feathers for boas and outfits and scribing. And, most importantly, eggs - not for eating so much as for managing future generations of these new “cash cows.”
“Right now,” our new friend, the ostrich rancher, said, “right now, these are bringing $18,000 a breeding pair!” “Yep”, he said, “18 grand for a male and a female.” “And,” he added, pointing toward the city, “I have six eggs in my garage at home right now that are in an incubator getting ready to hatch! So, that’s another 54 thousand dollars right there. And none of that counts what we can get for the meat, and the hide and the feathers if that’s the way we want to go with them”.
When we headed back into town, after promising to drop by and see the incubator that was in the guy’s garage, I told my wife I was a little skeptical.
I’d always wanted a pair of good-quality boots made from ostrich skin, the kind of boots you’d see on cattle buyers out at the Amarillo Stockyards, the guys who didn’t actually go into the pens and didn’t actually walk in the mud and the dung. No, I’m talking about the guys who ate the best steak in town for lunch every day. I never could afford the steak, and I dang sure never could afford the boots.
“It is,” my Farm Editor told me in breathless tones, “truly, truly, The Next Big Thing!”
It was months later, and I was back in the newsroom at the Wichita Falls newspaper, where I was in charge of a staff of reporters and editors and photographers.
In his hand, Farm Editor Rick, a good ole boy from rural Oklahoma, held a flyer with a bigprint invitation for him to attend a free lunch and doo-dah afternoon at a ranch near Graham, Texas, so as to introduce him to The Next Big Thing in cattle ranching. “Them ostriches,” as he put it.
When Rick got back, he was, to put it mildly, as excited as a hen might be if she laid a huge purple egg worth $9,000.
“They’re so much more versatile than cows,” Rick lectured, as if he’d just finished a semester in big-bird husbandry at Oklahoma State University. “There’s the hide to turn into leather, the oil to turn into sunscreen and skin cream, the feathers for boas and hats … and the meat! Tastes just like prime steak! So tender you can cut it with a fork!”
And, he added, you raise ‘em like cattle and sell them as breeding pairs! They’re bringing $18,000 a pair!
Rick was pushing me hard to put his story at the top of the front page in the next morning’s paper.
(Come back next week for Part Two – “How the Big Bird Saga Unravels”) (Carroll Wilson is a Texas journalist for 50 years. Author, radio show host and teacher, he sings in church, plays guitar and does some art. He’s most happy to be a husband, dad and grandfather. Has a very good dog.)
