Cape York Weekly shared an intense video on Facebook of the world’s deadliest bird chasing down a gamekeeper while he was riding on his four-wheeler and it looked like a scene out of the movie Jurassic Park.
Senior Custodian Cameron Wilson and Ranger Clayton Enoch with the Several Wuthathi Land and Sea were out inspecting an overgrown track near Shelburne Bay when Cameron spotted the angry bird.
He had just passed through a patch of the rainforest on his four-wheeler when he noticed a cassowary, which is a bird known for its deadly claws, chasing behind him at full speed.
Trying to get away, he hit an embankment which stopped him and had an intense stare-down with the bird for a long eight minutes until ranger Clayton Enoch came to his rescue.
“Cam was waving at me to slow down and I was like, ‘What for?’” Clayton said, according to Cape York Weekly.“Then he held two fingers up to his eyes and pointed behind me and I saw the cassowary in the scrub. I thought, ‘Holy shit.’”
At this point, both the men got back on their four-wheelers and started to leave but the cassowary stayed hot on their tails and remained fairly close during its pursuit.
“It amazed me because I didn’t realise how fast they could run,” Clayton said. “He just wouldn’t let us go. 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. I’ve been working in wildlife for years and I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Eventually, the cassowary stopped chasing them and turned its attention to chasing other Wuthathi custodians that were driving along the same track with Clayton and Cameron.
“It was like a scene out of Jurassic Park,” Indigenous Protected Area Coordinator Sophie Holt said, according to Cape York Weekly. “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.”