Attacked by a Cassowary

Cassowaries are the third biggest (flightless) bird after the ostrich and emu. They are colourful, have a hard and prominent casque on their head and their middle claw is a 12 cm long dagger. They can jump two metres off the ground, run at a speed of up to 50 km, stand up to 6′ tall and weigh anywhere from 110 to 160 pounds.

A Cassowary is a BIG bird. They eat and poop a lot.

Cassowaries predominantly eat fruit and the enormous piles they leave behind are full of undigested seeds and berries. They walk great distances and are responsible for the distribution and germination of all kinds of plants. Cool, right?

My first encounter with a Cassowary was in the Atherton Tablelands just north of Cairns in Australia. I’d ventured there with another traveller I’d met, Merry. We decided to hike the waterfall circuit trails after all the rain of a recent cyclone.

One of our first days hiking, Merry and I came across piles of dung so large I felt like a dinosaur would dip his head down through the tree canopy at any moment, see us and indulge in a mid-morning snack.

Cassowaries were already on Merry’s radar though. She hoped the piles meant we would see one of these great birds in the wild. I was less keen. At the entrance to one of the hiking spots there was a trail sign that warned about the Cassowary’s fighting prowess and the ability to (and this next word I recall quite clearly), ‘disembowel’ it’s adversaries with its dagger-like claws. Those piles of poop looked ominous to me.

A day or two later, we met Henry.

He’d been mentioned in the notes given to us by the owner of the cabin we rented. In addition to the directions to find the place (turn onto the private road with the passion fruit vine at the country gate), he gave us all kinds of tips on getting the most out of our time there. Specifically, he mentioned that there was a small creek on the property with a resident platypus and that we should keep an eye out for Henry who was a local character known for his frequent public outbursts of anger.

Henry was a Cassowary. On the day we saw him in action, he believed he had met another equally angry and aggressive Cassowary. They were a stunning match for each other. Every move Henry made, the ‘other’ Cassowary made an equally cunning and fierce rebuttal. Henry was relentless. His antics alone may have inspired the trail sign about disembowelment. On this particular day, however, Henry wasn’t fighting a living adversary. He was fighting his own reflection in a van and he was definitely winning. The van looked awful and Merry decided she didn’t want to see a Cassowary in the wild anymore.

Henry makes me think of this quote by Eckhart Tolle from his book, The Power of Now,

“…your perception of the world is a reflection of your state of consciousness. You are not separate from it, and there is no objective world out there. Every moment, your consciousness creates the world that you inhabit.”

Consider when you have been engaged in a toxic relationship, work environment or involved in a reactive and heated confrontation. How did you reflect that world in your interactions with others? How did it feed the story you tell yourself about ‘them’ and ‘the way it is out there’?

If your perception of the world is that everyone is a fierce Cassowary then you too may react to challenging situations as a fierce Cassowary. Or maybe you cower to the reflection, placate the reflection, ‘attempt to fix’ the reflection. How might you be Henry creating the world that you believe in?

Is it possible to consciously shift that particular relationship, negative experience at work, and difficult confrontation by altering your own perspective? What if everything out there is an illusion of your way of seeing? What if changing ‘them’ is irrelevant if the way you see and respond to life’s challenges is the only real source of change.

It is something worth thinking about and exploring.

Enjoy your week 🙂