Ostrich Riding in Oudtshoorn

First thing on Friday, we stopped halfway through our drive to do a little ostrich riding in Oudtshoorn. The only reason I wanted to do it is because I remember Grandpa telling me about he did it in Australia. Anyway, I was so terrified of that ostrich I was almost crying. All the girls in my group were just laughing at me! The guy tried to make me go first, but luckily I passed that role off onto someone else. Then when it was my turn, I still really didn’t want to go, but since I paid $5 for it I felt I needed to. To catch an ostrich, you put a sack over its head so that it can’t see you and it becomes immediately calm (ostriches are one of the stupidest animals and have the mentality that if they can’t see you, you can’t see them). Then to hop on it, you grab each of its wings and sit kind of on its back, kind of on its butt so you’re almost falling off. Then squeeze your knees around its middle section and lean back! If you know how much I love animals, you can imagine how much I loved riding on this thing. It was seriously the worst, I was more scared of that ostrich than I was of skydiving! I rode it around the pen once, surrounded by other ostriches that seemed ready to peck me to death. Four of the other girls were running around with their ostriches too. One girl got bucked off by hers. I wish I did, but I was stuck on mine because they didn’t tell me how to get off! So I’m just riding this thing around, about to cry, with pictures being taken and such, and I’m yelling to the guy who works with these horrid birds to take me off. While I was trying to get on and while I was trying to ride and while I was asking to get off, these men are just yelling all these commands at me. And everything was contradicting! It was “squeeze your knees,” “lean back,” “lean forward,” “let go,” “loosen up!” So confusing, finally one man felt sorry for me and told me I could just let go and slide off whenever I wanted to. So I waited until I wasn’t completely surrounded by other ostriches and made my escape! As we walked toward the car I said, “There’s one thing I can cross of my list and I never have to do again!”