'Everybody's in shock': Family reeling after intruders brutally kill pet emu in rural Haldimand
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Shannon McCarrell is in mourning. So are her birds.
The Haldimand County woman has barely slept since two people broke into an enclosure on her farm near Fisherville in the early morning of March 13 and killed her beloved pet emu, named McTavish.
“It is devastating to be woken up by your 15-year-old telling you your emu is dead, and going out and realizing he didn’t die of natural causes,” McCarrell told The Hamilton Spectator.
She and her husband, Matt, consider their birds — and the many other animals who call Mizfit Farms home — part of the family.
“I’ve raised them since they were three days old,” McCarrell said of two-year-old McTavish and his brother, Lennox, both of whom she bought from a meat farm in Tavistock.
“We were inseparable. I literally took them everywhere with me,” said McCarrell, who took her feathered companions shopping and to the animal hospital where she works as a veterinary technician, before snuggling together on the couch at night.
McTavish’s violent death has left the family traumatized.
“My husband can’t sleep. I can’t sleep. Everybody’s in shock,” McCarrell said. “I went to work and I was like a zombie.”
It’s believed the assailants stole onto the McCarrell homestead around 3 a.m., damaging the fence on the far side of the high-walled animal pen and somehow slipping past the barn without waking the geese and chickens slumbering inside.
The family’s emus, along with Duncan the ostrich, typically sleep in the barn too.
“If it’s nice out — which it was that night — they don’t want to come in, so we’ll leave them out,” McCarrell said.
McTavish would not have suspected any malicious intent when strangers approached in the middle of the night, she said. He likely would have trundled over to the fence to see if the new arrivals had any food.
Instead, the intruders appear to have hit the emu over the head to weaken him — “I’m thinking (with) a machete or something,” McCarrell said — before chasing him to the other end of the pen and snapping his neck backwards, leaving bone protruding through the emu’s thick skin, and the grass covered in blood and feathers.
They then dragged McTavish’s body to the centre of the pen.
“They left him for me to find in the middle of the ground,” McCarrell said. “That’s brutal. That’s personal.”
McTavish was fully grown and feisty, standing about five-foot-eight and weighing 120 pounds — in other words, he was a big bird, and not easy to subdue, McCarrell said.
“For them to have been able to get ahold of him to be able to snap the neck, they had to injure him,” she said.
Matt McCarrell might have unwittingly scared off the attackers by letting one of the dogs out not long after McTavish was killed, potentially saving the family’s three other emus from the same fate.
Haldimand County OPP launched an animal cruelty investigation on March 13. McCarrell sent investigators evidence from the crime scene, including photographs of McTavish’s injuries and security camera footage that captured the two intruders.
That the crime happened on the first night the emus were allowed to stay outside — and when McCarrell was away from the house, working the overnight shift — makes her suspect premeditation.
“I’m thinking they had to have been watching (the property), because what are the chances they came out the one night that (the emus) hadn’t been put away?” she said.
“It’s unnerving. They were right next to my family.”
FAMILY ‘ON EDGE’
Along with the big birds, the menagerie at Mizfit Farms includes hens, roosters, ducks, geese, barn cats and a dozen puppies.
The McCarrells — who moved to Haldimand from Ancaster in 2017 — delight in sharing stories and video clips showing the amusing antics of their emus, who have a habit of getting loose.
“Oh, they make things interesting,” Shannon McCarrell said. “They’re so funny.”
Emus are large, long-necked birds, though not as big as their fellow flightless cousins, the ostrich. They are strong, lean and serious about eating, especially when sharply pecking at their favourite snack, crumbled Cheez-It crackers.
“They’re just like dogs. Big dogs. They have personalities,” McCarrell said.
The family’s rural property is known locally as “the bird house,” where ostrich and emu heads often peek over the fenced-in pen.
“There’s always people stopping and taking pictures,” said McCarrell. “They all call me the crazy bird lady.”
McCarrell said the remaining three emus, along with Duncan the ostrich, have been “on edge” since McTavish’s violent death.
Wallace, McTavish’s mate, is especially aloof, staying in the corner of the pen while she grieves the end of what could have been a decades-long courtship.
“They are traumatized by it,” McCarrell said. “My ostrich was covered in his blood.”
A neighbour brought over mulch to hide the grisly scene, and McTavish’s body was taken to be cremated.
As a vet tech and longtime animal owner, death is a normal part of McCarrell’s life. But not like this, she said.
“Had (the emus) fought and something like that happened, that’s totally different. But this … this was cruel,” she said.
The McCarrells were already looking into finding a new home for their big birds, as the physical toll of caring for them is becoming too much.
“Now it’s making me do it faster,” said McCarrell, who is in talks with a local zoo.
“They’ll have so much interaction with people there. They love people-watching,” she said.
“And we can still come and see them.”
McCarrell does not want to interfere with the police investigation by publicly speculating about who could have committed such a “brutal and horrific” crime. But she said she feels targeted by having people come onto her property and kill one of their beloved birds.
“They knew how to get me,” she said.
Investigators are reviewing video footage and ask anyone with information to call the detachment at 1-888-310-1122 or submit an anonymous tip through Crime Stoppers.
McCarrell said she has been overwhelmed by an outpouring of support from friends and the general public. She is holding onto hope the killers will have a change of heart — or be unnerved by the prospect of jail time for an animal cruelty conviction — and turn themselves in.
In the meantime, a rattled family tries to carry on.
The McCarrells used to leave their cars unlocked overnight. Since McTavish was killed, they have added more security cameras and put more locks on their barn.
“We’re out in the middle of nowhere. We have no neighbours. Nobody’s ever bugged us before,” McCarrell said.
“And now … who’s to say they’re not going to come back?”
J.P. Antonacci is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter based at the Hamilton Spectator. The initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
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