You may remember that there was a lot of pressure to cover this here ostrich story big time in the Wichita Falls Record News – the pressure coming from Rick, the Farm Editor who had attended an informational free lunch to extol the virtues of ostrich farming.
Rick wanted his story at the top of the front page in the next morning’s paper. “Rick,” I said, “If and when I can go to the boot shop and buy a pair of full-quill ostrich-skin boots for under $300, I’ll get genuinely excited about this Next Big Thing, and we’ll play it up big. Until then, it’s a fun curiosity. Write four or five paragraphs and we’ll get it in somewhere.”
My skepticism aside, a lot of North Texas and southern Oklahoma people with a little land, a cattle tank and $18,000 to spare became bird ranchers. They had seminars, breeding conferences, sales presentations, product introductions. It was as if they had discovered solid 24-karat gold walking around on two giant ugly feet snatching earrings off women’s ear lobes.
One morning the newspaper’s front page carried a big full-color photo of a couple of deputy sheriffs trying to lasso and bring to heel an ostrich that had escaped, finding a way over, under or through the barbed wire fence and then coming on into town, presumably in search of ear bobs to gobble They ended up having to shoot the bird while kids from the neighborhood were watching; while TV cameras were rolling; while Rick was hemming and hawing about how THAT picture and story really did not belong on the front page.
Not many days after that, Rick toted a portable charcoal grill to the newspaper office. He cooked me up an ostrich steak. It did not taste like chicken. It was pretty good. But … “It’s not $200 full-quill boots,” I told him One Saturday morning, the saga truly seemed to unravel in print and photographs above the fold, front page,
Wichita Falls Record News.
Ostrich ranchers, who could no longer afford to keep their birds, had turned them loose all across the area. They were letting these naive emigres from Down Under fend for themselves in a world of total indifference … and coyotes.
Later that day, I got a phone call. It was from a fellow who lived in Burkburnett, Texas, near the Red River and Oklahoma border.
“I’m sure wanting to thank you for printing that story in your paper today,” he said. Seems he’d been holding up his end of a bar on the south side of Wichita Falls and headed home in his new pickup on I44 at about 3 o’clock a.m. three sheets to the wind, so to speak. Somewhere around where you’d turn off to go to Camp Perkins, he nodded off only to be abruptly brought to consciousness by the sounds of his front end crashing into an immoveable object.
His wife was awake when our friend got home and tried to sneak into the house. As she inspected the wrecked front end of his pickup, he tried to tell her the story, but let’s just say the word “skeptical” doesn’t even cover the first sentence out of her mouth.
“I told her, I got out of the pickup,” he told me, “and I walked around to the front. And this giant bird, this ostrich, jumped up, shook itself off and headed east toward the Scout camp! I’d hit a damned bird! I was too shocked to even get a picture.”
“I just want to thank you,” he said, “for putting that story on the front page this morning. When I picked up the paper from the driveway, I showed it to her and it sure saved my ass”.
Years later I was able to buy a pair of full-quill ostrich-skin boots. They cost me $650 and change.
(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.)
