Emotional support emu in man's home sparks legal fight: 'I needed this bird'

 

Emotional support emu in man's home sparks legal fight: 'I needed this bird'

Nicholas Olenik says he’d never experienced grief and depression until his brother and father died in the span of less than two years.

“It was just a little much. I never felt that low before, so I was looking for anything (to help),” Olenik, 41, who lives in the Kempsville neighborhood of Virginia Beach, Virginia, 

What finally helped was an emotional support animal in the form of an emu, the large flightless bird, prescribed to him by a local psychotherapist, he says. Olenik raised the bird from a tiny chick at his suburban home and felt his mental health improve.

“It brought me back to life,” he notes. “It gave me a reason to wake up in the morning.”

But when a neighbor complained he was keeping an emu, it set off a legal fight with city officials. The emu industry also cautions against the practice. The American Emu Association doesn’t support keeping emus as pets, warning suburban environments are inadequate for the birds. It also doesn’t consider them emotional support or therapy animals.

“Emu are horrible pets,” Kymara Lonergan, vice president of the American Emu Association, and an emu owner, handler and educator in Ulster Park, New York, t. She’s concerned people see the LiMu Emu in TV ads and “get the idea all emu act like CGI-generated cartoon birds.”