Moment 'world's deadliest bird' chases gamekeeper
A gamekeeper in Australia was chased by the 'world's deadliest bird' as he fled in a quad bike.
Cameron Wilson, a senior custodian at Wuthathi National Park, in north Queensland, had been inspecting a track when he 'had a feeling that something was following him', a post on the Wuthathi Aboriginal Corporation Facebook page explained.
The post continued: "When he spun around he spotted the determined cassowary chasing him at full speed."
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Cassowaries have powerful legs and long, sharp claws on their feet, capable of inflicting fatal damage.
Naturally then, Cameron floored it in a bid to escape the determined bird – but he ended up falling out after hitting an embankment.
He then had 'a tense seven minutes one on one' with the huge bird before his colleagues came to his aid.
Ranger Clayton Enoch told Australian Rural & Regional News: "Cam was waving at me to slow down and I was like, 'What for?'
"Then he held two fingers up to his eyes and pointed behind me and I saw the cassowary in the scrub. I thought, 'Holy s**t.'"
The pair tried to distance themselves from the bird, but once again, it proved itself to be capable of keeping up with a quad bike.
"He just wouldn’t let us go," Clayton said.
"I got whacked by a branch with green ants on it and had them crawling all over me at the same time. It was crazy.
"He was flying alongside me and he let out this pterodactyl-like noise out of his beak.
"The casque on top of his head was close to 30 centimetres long. He was a really healthy bird."
He added: "I've been working in wildlife for years and I've never seen anything like that. It amazed me because I didn't realise how fast they could run."
The bird – which has now been named CC (Cameron's Cassowary) – wasn't done chasing just yet, turning its attention to a six-seater buggy carrying other custodians and legging it after them for the best part of a kilometre.
"It was like a scene out of Jurassic Park," area coordinator Sophie Halt said.
"Jim (Turnour), our general manager, did a very good job of keeping his speed up because the tracks are incredibly overgrown.
"We kept thinking 'What if this cassowary catches us?' We were just praying there weren't any logs or debris on the track."
Thankfully, they all came out unscathed. And what's more, they got some pretty incredible photos and videos to boot.
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Jake Massey