Emu Snatches And Swallows Woman’s $500 Tiffany’s Earring At Sydney Zoo

An emu swallowed a woman's $550 Tiffany & Co. earring at a Sydney Zoo when she leaned in to click a selfie.

As Ashna Ali, a mother of two, snapped a candid picture, the flightless bird named Bert gobbled up her hoop. The cheeky emu can be seen eyeing the expensive earring moments before it made a meal out of it, reported News.com

Bert, the blatantly confident emu has made his presence known as the resident jewelry thief at Sydney Zoo after snatching the zoo visitor's $550 earring. Seeds, berries, bark, nuts, and stems are all commonly a part of an emu's diet. They also eat insects, reptiles, and other animals that their gut and beak can handle, but Bert decided to go rogue and that too for an expensive object that's not on his dietary list.

“You can see him eyeing my earring out,” Ali told A Current Affair about the selfie. “I sat down and as I finished clicking, he just grabbed it, grabbed my ear, I felt a peck,” she said. The burglary ruined the fun day out for Ali who took several photos to show zoo workers, so that the alleged ‘offender' was quickly identified, she told the local news outlet.

To chase down the money to replace the expensive earring, zoo manager Chris Rivett was made aware of the resident thief running loose on his grounds. Rivett was optimistic in returning the earring to Ali, saying that the zoo was combing through Bert's droppings every day in search of the earring.

“Give us seven days and we'll try and locate it," Rivett told Ali who was hoping the bird is capable of excreting the earring.

A Current Affair noted that for seven days, a zoo attendant had the unenviable job of sifting through Bert’s poop to check if he had passed the earring that belongs to Ali.

After a week-long wait, Rivett said although there was no luck on finding the hoop in the bird’s poop, there was a happy ending to the story. “Seven days have passed, the earring has not turned up which is not surprising, we’ve been in contact with Tiffany’s who said they’ll make another earring. It’ll take roughly two weeks,” he said.