Seeing a cassowary up close really feels like being able to see a dinosaur. They've got those three-toed dinosaur feet with legs as thick as yours, giant yellow saucer eyes, iridescent skin and a weird head horn. It watches back at you. You really feel like you're looking at a dinosaur. Only thing it's missing is the teeth and maybe forelimbs. Otherwise it's like 80% of a dinosaur.
I visited Australia in January 2005, it was an organized road tour with a bunch of mainly young French people and a French guide. On the way to the outback near Cairns, we stopped and did a short hike in the forest to see a point of interest (I don't remember what). There was a warning sign in the parking lot about cassowaries. I had never seen a cassowary, even heard the name and didn't know what it was, like many of the people in the group. On the way back, we spotted a cassowary, it was static just a few meters from the track. We all took pictures but stayed on the track, at some point the cassowary probably felt threatened and started chasing us. We all ran, I remember looking back at it while being chased and it ran like a Jurassic park dinosaur. It was moving really fast, at an intersection, we all turned left downhill going away from the parking lot and it stopped chasing us. It never went on the track and it always staid in the forest, it could have easily outrun us.
After I learnt the kind of injuries it could inflict to humans. The guide should have been more careful. Anyway it was a fun story to tell when I got home.
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