Ostriches can be a force to be reckoned with. That’s what police officers in a small southern Alberta town found out when they assisted in wrangling 20 escaped ostriches.
The town of Taber, Alberta, Canada, was overrun with the escaped birds roaming freely around. Taber Police Services posted about the incident on Facebook saying that they worked with the RCMP to capture the animals.
According to officials, the ostriches escaped a local farm in the early morning of November 24, 2022. Multiple Mounties and Taber police were able to corral all the birds by 1:30 p.m. and return them to their owner.
Corporal Troy Savinkoff said Mounties are regularly called to help wrangle escaped livestock like horses and cows but ostriches are certainly one of the odder animals they’ve assisted with.
“Ostrich is definitely not the usual one that we would go to work expecting to deal with,” Savinkoff said. “That’s one of the things as an RCMP officer: it’s really hard to predict what you’ll be doing on any day, and certainly there are days where you go back home after the end of a long shift and you’re surprised by what you encountered during that shift.”