Ogling the Ostriches

Ostrich egg. Put it in a spaghetti pot filled with water and go take a nap. It can take up to two hours to hardboil an ostrich egg.

A lot of these ostrich facts come from Lucille Cogburn, wife of the man with the bib overalls and white bushy eyebrows. As Lucille and I talk, Rooster Cogburn stands several feet away bellowing at his birds like a hog farmer with a reedy falsetto. Lucille has seen and heard his antics before and smiles benignly. He's having fun yelling at his birds, she seems to say, but let's get back to our talk about the intelligence of ostriches.

"You know," she remarks, "these birds are not real bright, but they got the tourist bit down good. As soon as a car pulls into the parking area, they go racing for the fence looking for handouts."

At the east end of their farm, the Cogburns have a stand where, for $2, they'll sell you a cup with 8 ounces of corn and rabbit pellets. As soon as a car arrives, the ostriches all seem to know this transaction is about to take place, and they're ready, their long gray necks bobbing above the fence the minute you get out of your vehicle.

How dumb can they be?

In some ways, Rooster implies, not much dumber than some human beings. "Two different advertising agencies wanted to come here to take pictures of ostriches burying their heads in the ground," he says. "Can you imagine that supposedly intelligent professionals would believe something like that?"

I gulp and look incredulous.

"That's an ostrich myth," Lucille says. "In the desert, wild ostriches sitting on a nest of eggs will lie down and put their necks along the ground for protection, and from a distance it just looks like they're burying their heads."

Of course! I knew that.

Lucille wants me to know that ostriches live 40 to 70 years, and one of their eggs is equal to about two dozen chicken eggs.

"They're sweeter and fluffier than regular eggs," she says. And plentiful: Domesticated South African black ostriches will lay 60 to 80 eggs a year. All you need is your own ostrich and a forklift truck, and you can harvest enough cholesterol to float a barge.

"We raise ostriches for meat, which is very lean and similar to beef," Lucille says. "We also sell the feathers and their hides, which is the most expensive exotic leather around." The leather is often used for boots, pocketbooks and wallets.

She also tells me that ostrich feathers are great for dusting because dust adheres to them. Other feather dusters just move the dust around, but these actually pick it up, she insists. She gave me a long-handled ostrich feather duster to take home. I gave it to my wife. Now neither one of us knows where it is, and the house looks pretty much the same.

One day I discovered that a friend, Karen Gonzales, had worked with ostriches for several years. I could tell she was bristling when I suggested that ostriches might not be the brightest citizens in the animal kingdom.

"I don't think they're stupid," she insists. "Because they're only a few generations from being hatched in the wild, they still act very wild. Ostriches have only been kept by humans, or farmed, since the mid1800s, compared to cows, which have been domesticated for thousands of years. When an ostrich is scared, it will run right into a fence. Some people might find that very stupid. But, the instinct to run at the first sight or sound of danger is very strong in them. That's what keeps them alive in the wild."

Karen once had a half-blind ostrich named Stevie, which she had raised from a chick. Trying to convince me of the power of an ostrich's brain, she told me this story: "Stevie loved to eat the leaves off our fruit trees. He'd look you in the eye, look up at the leaves in the tree and then look you in the eye again, his way of asking for some. Does that sound like stupid to you? He loved mulberry leaves."

There also seems to be some question about the link between curiosity and intelligence. We tend to think that a person who is very curious about everything may be intelligent (or, in some cases, just a busybody). If curiosity signifies intelligence, then ostriches may be absolutely brilliant. They want to investigate everything on you. If you happen to be wearing a shirt with buttons, or jewelry, you don't want to get too cozy with an ostrich. They'll peck the pearl buttons off your nice Western shirt and pull stuff out of your pockets faster than a thief on the Rome metro.

They're also fast on their feet. In Africa, wild ostriches can run up to 35 miles per hour in short bursts. They get to be 10 feet tall and can weigh up to 400 pounds. The single major claw on each foot is its only weapon, used for defense. One kick by a wild ostrich can gut a lion.

Which may be why Cogburn kept a fence between himself and the ostrich he kissed. You never know when you'll run into an ostrich in a foul mood. Al Since writing this story, Sam Negri of Tucson has located his feather duster and is currently enrolled at a major university to learn how to use it.

Tom Vezo of Green Valley says the visit to the ostrich farm was one of his most entertaining assignments of all time.

THE PERALTA STONES

MAPS TO THE LOST DUTCHMAN GOLD MINE

ARE THE CONTROVERSIAL PERALTA STONES actually “stone maps” that lead to the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine? Did they lie buried in the desert for almost 100 years before being discovered at the foot of the Superstition Mountains? Are they clues to the Holy Grail for treasure hunters worldwide?

Until recently, hard evidence on the incised sandstone slabs has been scarce. But thanks to some scientific sleuthing, we may finally have answers to the Peralta Stones' puzzle.

The story behind the stones goes something like this: Sometime in the early 1860s, German-born miner Jacob They found the place and after mining gold from an open pit, Waltz and Weiser