The emus who had fled into Miss Annabel’s yard had apparently been stymied by her tall iron fence. One of them was hurling himself against it repeatedly, with no success, while the other two were running up and down on either side of him, looking for an opening and trampling all the orange day lilies underfoot.
“Look!” I tugged on Caroline’s sleeve. “Miss Annabel’s fence is holding. They can corner them there.”
I wasn’t sure she heard me but she followed my pointing finger, nodded, and began bellowing instructions to the troops. Eventually they all caught on. The KP crew were the first to chase their emu in the right direction, so now there were four emus trampling Miss Annabel’s flower beds. Another crew of at least a dozen volunteers was trying to pick up the mess tent with the emu still wrapped inside it so they could carry it to the holding pen.
The remaining two emus had been thwarted in their attempt to reach the woods beyond the parking lot and were milling about on or near the roadway, surrounded by a large circle of horses, motorcycles, trucks, and eager volunteers on foot. I hoped the volunteers didn’t get complacent. Just because the emus were surrounded at the moment didn’t mean they were caught. Getting them back into the pen was going to be a tricky job. And—
Just then a small black-and-white form trotted out into the open area around the emus. It was Lad, Seth Early’s border collie.
The townspeople and some of the volunteers laughed, but a few of them had met Lad and seen him work his magic on sheep, goats, cows, pigs, llamas, and even small children. They shouted to the others to keep the circle going and see what Lad could do.
Lad trotted until he was a few yards from the emus, then he flopped down on his belly and began creeping toward them, giving them what border collie trainers called the Eye. It was supposed to hypnotize sheep. I’m not sure the emus were hypnotized, but clearly they had never seen anything like it and they seemed to be watching him curiously.
“Go, Lad!” Jamie shouted. He was wiping away tears with his fists and snuffling into the handkerchief Michael was holding to his nose.
“Go, emus,” Josh countered, looking as if he might take his turn at crying any second.
A silence fell over the crowd as Lad alternately crept and ran, barked and stared. He eventually worked his way behind the emus and set them in motion toward the pen, running back and forth and nipping at the heels of any would-be escapee. Occasionally one of the emus would attempt to slash at him with its talons, but Lad seemed to sense when this was about to happen and leaped away so deftly that they never came close to touching him.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when the two emus trotted back into the pen. Everyone except Lad, of course, who waited with visible impatience until one of the volunteers had shut the gate securely, and then bounded toward Miss Annabel’s yard to work his magic on the four emus there.
“Lad saves the day,” Michael said.
“And Spike and Tinkie,” Jamie added.
“Yes, if they hadn’t barked, we would never have noticed that the emus were escaping,” I said. “Extra treats for all the dogs tonight.”
We watched until Lad and the volunteers had successfully herded the remaining four emus into the pen, then went down to praise and reward the dogs.
We couldn’t possibly have gotten near Lad, who was the center of an immense crowd of admirers. He sat at Seth Early’s feet, graciously accepting pats and seemingly indifferent to the fact that Seth prevented people from offering him treats. You had to know Lad to read the signs that he wasn’t just gazing at the crowd with friendly interest, but studying us, all the better to figure out how and where he’d herd us if his master suddenly noticed how disorganized we humans were and gave him the go-ahead to deal with us.
Spike and Tinkerbell were more than happy to absorb any treats that happened to fall their way. I could tell from Spike’s self-important strutting that he considered the return of the emus a personal triumph.
The festivities were slowly breaking up. A lot of people were gathered around the emu pen, watching as Clarence examined the emus, particularly the one who had been trapped in the mess tent, to make sure none had suffered any injuries during their escape attempt. The kitchen crew had hauled the mess tent back to its site and were attempting to untangle it and set it up so it would be ready for breakfast. Here and there small clumps of people, a mixture of volunteers and townspeople, were discussing the joust or the emu chase. But everyone was slowly drifting away, the volunteers to their tents and trailers, the townspeople to their cars.
Michael and Natalie took the boys over to the mess tent area, in the hope of begging a bedtime snack. I fetched food and water for Spike and Tinkerbell, since we’d decided to let them roam the emu pen overnight. They seemed happy there, and the emus seem to like them, particularly Edward Everett Horton. Maybe the dogs would sound an alarm if an intruder approached the emus—or Miss Annabel’s backyard. As a team, they actually were pretty good security. A year or so ago, when the human occupants of our house were all over at Mother and Dad’s farm for a party, a hapless burglar had tried to break in. He’d heard Spike barking and decided not to worry about a dog that small and yappy, but it was another story when Tinkerbell suddenly loomed out of the darkness, knocked him down, and sat on him for the next six hours.