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WARNING! EXERCISE MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH!

      Well, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch. But Patty Fulton and John Dunn had to be reconsidering--even if only briefly--their commitment to outdoor exercise, in light of their recent 'encounter with nature’ in a park in South Africa.

       Fulton, an international programs specialist with the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, and Dunn, director of the Cooperative Resources Management Division in the Rural Business-Cooperative Service, were on a 10-day assignment in Pretoria, South Africa on behalf of USDA projects in support of cooperative development and agribusiness/extension development. One morning they went to a nature park on the outskirts of Pretoria for a workout. “I was preparing for an upcoming marathon and John likes to bike, so we decided to pace each other through the park,” Fulton said.

      Dunn explained that this particular nature park accommodated hiking, jogging, and biking--unlike other geographic areas which are nature preserves, and where such human activities aren’t allowed. “This means that it wasn’t unusual for us to notice that all of us humans, who were exercising in this setting, were sharing the park with a number of different birds and animals, both two-legged and four-legged varieties,” he affirmed.

      So they weren’t all that surprised to come upon an ostrich during the path of their workout. Nevertheless, Fulton decided that she wanted to “capture the moment” on film, so they both stopped and she got her camera out of Dunn’s backpack on his bike.

'Big Bird’ the ostrich looks somewhat benign when this picture was snapped in Pretoria, South Africa--but seconds later it was hissing heavily, and then launched into 'attack mode’ against CSREES’s Patty Fulton and RBS’s John Dunn. Just what was going on here, anyway? And just how tall was that bird: eight feet, or fifteen?--Photo by Patty Fulton

      “As I was focusing my camera I heard the ostrich starting to hiss heavily at us,” she recalled. Then the creature turned toward Dunn, ran at him, and appeared to move into 'attack mode.’ Dunn, who was straddling his bike at the time, purposely rolled over, lay on the ground, used the bike as a shield, and began kicking the ostrich with his heel in its sternum, a technique he had mastered while teaching, as a black-belt in karate.

      “So I’m both frozen and transfixed, watching this unfold in front of me,” Fulton said. “And I’m thinking to myself, 'Here I am, on the opposite side of the world from home, and I’m about to witness a colleague get killed by Big Bird!’”

      But she recovered her senses and concluded it was time to trade in her camera for some rocks. “I grabbed some rocks and started throwing 'em at the ostrich,” she said. “And yes, I know, I was on its turf, not mine, and in a perfect world maybe I’d have thought of a kinder, gentler approach,” she added. “But I figured that my options were limited at that particular moment.”

      The rock-throwing worked--sort of. The bird turned away from Dunn--and then began chasing Fulton.

      “I started running down the hill, with the ostrich behind me,” she said. “John was yelling, 'Down, Down!’ and I thought, 'Hello?! I am going down--down this hill’.”

      “And then I realized he meant that I should 'Get Down’.”

      At about that time Fulton looked around and saw the ostrich was two feet behind her and gaining. So she turned her body slightly, did a quick 180-degree turn, and the bird ran by her, grazing her with its feathers. She then ran back up the hill to where Dunn was now on his feet and armed with more rocks--although, as Dunn later quipped, “At this point, Patty was now more in danger from getting hit by one of my errant throws.”

      The ostrich approached closer, slowed down, stared at them, and then ran off in the opposite direction.

      “Are you okay?” she said.
      “Are you okay?” he said.
      “That thing was eight feet tall!” she said.
      “No, it was fifteen feet tall!” he said.
      Then they both burst out laughing.
      “But we still had to get out of that park,” Fulton emphasized. “And, as we made tracks for the exit, every time we even saw a sparrow,” she quipped, “we’d jump.”

      As they exited the park they asked each other, “Do you think anybody back in USDA is gonna believe this?”

      “Naah,” they concluded...