Column: Tales from Exit 22

The legend lives on from Oscar on down, of the big bird they called Itchy Richie.

The circus was in town.

When he was a boy, Oscar had friends who wanted to run off and join the circus. Not Oscar. He had never been to the circus

He read the newspaper account of the circus. It said that an ostrich named Itchy Richie was part of the spectacle. The story said that the ostrich was so large that a man could ride on its back.

“Imagine that,” said Oscar to himself.

He wanted to see an ostrich. He’d seen photographs of ostriches in National Geographic magazines. He’d subscribed to that magazine for so long that Oscar had seen nearly everything. The first time he saw a picture of an ostrich, he’d put seeing a live one on his bucket list. That was before there were bucket lists. Seeing an ostrich became a goal.

It would have been wonderful (maybe even twoderful) to see an ostrich but Oscar had no time to go gallivanting off to a circus. He had dirt to scratch and eggs to lay. Oscar kept chickens and the chicken chores kept Oscar busy. Who would gather the eggs and feed the hens if Oscar went to the circus? Still, it would have been nice to see an ostrich. He’d buy an ostrich if there were no perches necessary. That thought made Oscar chuckle.

Oscar sighed and turned the page. There was another story about the circus. In this article, it said that the ostrich that Oscar longed to see, had escaped. Just as it was the dream of some of Oscar’s boyhood friends to run off and join a circus, it might have been Itchy Richie’s dream to run off and join a farm. The circus owner wanted to hear from anyone seeing the fugitive.

“Where does an ostrich hide?” Oscar wondered.

Oscar answered his own question. An ostrich didn’t bury its head in the sand, but a bird big enough to guard a prison and eat a Chihuahua whole could hide anywhere it wanted. He wondered how the bird found feathers in its size.

Oscar figured that seeing an ostrich just wasn’t in the cards for him. He put down the newspaper. It was time to gather eggs. He moved through the henhouse and grabbed every egg. He checked each nest twice to make sure he didn’t miss an egg. He washed the eggs and placed them into crates meant to hold eggs. He slid the crates carefully into the box of his pickup truck — a truck that he’d purchased with the profits from egg sales. He climbed into the cab and started the truck. He headed down the driveway and turned onto a township road. He was driving to town to sell the hen fruit.

The road was all business but Oscar was bothered. His cows were contented, but Oscar was not. Oscar didn’t want much. Removing stones from a field rocked his world, but he had really wanted to see that ostrich.

Oscar wasn’t driving fast. The road had bumps, and he was hauling fragile cargo. He was watching the road but thinking about ostriches. A daydreaming filmstrip was running through his mind. It showed the ostrich photos he’d seen in the National Geographics.

The filmstrip ended prematurely as it always did in school. The film would break and the projector made that “fwut, fwut, fwut” sound. This time it was because something was coming down the road right at Oscar and his pristine pickup. Oscar sensed that whatever it was, it wasn’t motorized. It moved as if it were running.

As it neared, Oscar was amazed to see that it was an ostrich. It ran straight toward his truck as if it had no intention of veering. The ostrich was playing a game of chicken with Oscar. That gave Oscar a geranium in his cranium.

Oscar didn’t want to run over the only living ostrich he’d ever seen, and he didn’t want to be run over by the only living ostrich he’d ever seen. Oscar swerved. He swerved too much. A tire caught the edge of the road and the truck went into the ditch. The result was a dented fender, a smashed headlight, and three eggs remaining unbroken. The yolk was on Oscar’s truck as Itchy Richie the ostrich hoofed his way to the horizon.

The sheriff arrived on the scene and asked for details.

All Oscar could say was, “At least I got to see an ostrich.”

Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.