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The Cassowary — is a flightless bird indigenous to New Guinea.  I’ve heard some say that each of us has four spirit animals and I’ve heard others say we have one.  In any case, thus far into my journey, the cassowary is the one spirit animal I know about.

I have been fascinated with cassowaries and emus, and the whole flightless bird lineage, ever since second grade, when Miss Pusateri gave us an assignment to write a report about Australia and/or New Guinea.  We could write about anything as long as it concerned that region, and I chose to write about the flightless birds of that area.  Around that same time, I began portraying flightless birds in all my elementary school art — in ceramics, on placemats, with crayons, etc.

I immediately identified with the cassowary bird.  The awkward existence of being a bird who cannot fly has led the cassowary to becoming a fast runner and a great swimmer.  The cassowaries toe nails are three inches long and as sharp as knives, and they kill byway of kicking their enemies with their immensely powerful legs.  A cassowary can jump seven feet in the air standing still.

The cassowary is nearly impossible to breed in a zoo or in any artifical confinement.  I believe there is only one example of a cassowary successfully bred in captivity.  Ratite (flightless bird)
babies are raised by the father since their nests have to be on the ground, and, but, when the cassowary fathers are forced to do their duty while in captivity, these passionate freedom fighters kill their young.

The cassowary is one of the few animals in our world who is known to attack man on sight.  No provocation is needed, that is how furious the cassowary is with the human race.

Once one of them sees you hanging around in the New Guinea underbrush, you’ve got five feet seven inches of a prehistoric bird that can move up to thirty miles per hour coming down on you.

The cassowaries, and all their earthbound relatives, still have wings.  The muscles have atrophied to the point where the wings can no longer even be flapped.  In fact, ornithologists are pretty convinced that the cassowary bird is not at all aware of the fact that he/she still has wings.  I think about that all the time.

I often portray the cassowary in flight to remind myself that at any moment, any one of us, even a cassowary, might notice his/her own wings and put them to use.

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