Every now and then, I encounter an animal and think, Someone in the cosmic design department definitely phoned this one in. And at the top of that list, towering over all others — quite literally — is the ostrich.
Let’s be honest: the ostrich looks like the result of a late-night design meeting where Mother Nature spilled her coffee, grabbed the wrong blueprint, and said, “Eh… ship it.”
And lucky for us Rhode Islanders, you can examine this spectacular design flaw up close at the 1661 Farm & Gardens on Block Island. Nothing tests your belief in evolution, intelligent design, or cosmic humor quite like standing three feet away from an ostrich while it tries to decide whether you’re friend, foe, or possibly a snack.
I mean, where do we even begin?
Leg Day Gone Mad
The ostrich is basically two enormous, overdeveloped legs attached to a torso that looks like a beanbag chair covered in craft feathers. Those legs are so muscular they could qualify for the Olympics in both track and field. And the speed? Forty-five miles an hour. Forty-five. That’s highway speed.
If one ever chased me, especially on Block Island, I’d just hand it my moped and say, “Take it. You’ve clearly earned this.”
A Head That Looks Like It Was an Afterthought
Then you follow those ridiculous stilts up to… the head. A head so small it looks like a tennis ball mounted on a five-foot drinking straw.
And yet somehow that tiny real estate manages to deliver the whole family history.
Look closely — especially at the Block Island ostrich, who has mastered the “side-eye of judgment” — and you can absolutely see the dinosaur DNA flickering through. That expression belongs to a creature whose ancestors terrorized small mammals for a living.
It’s like a velociraptor got caught in a witness protection program and someone said, “Quick, throw feathers on it!”
Wings That Don’t Understand Their Assignment
Somewhere along the evolutionary timeline, wings were handed out with an implied job description: flying. The ostrich took one look at that memo and said, “Pass.”
Instead, it uses those tiny appendages for balance, intimidation, and dramatic gestures. They’re the jazz hands of the avian world.
The “If I Can’t See You, You Can’t See Me” Strategy
Then there’s the myth that ostriches bury their heads in the sand. They don’t — but the fact that humanity bought into that idea tells you everything you need to know about how confusing this animal’s design is.
To be fair, if your body looked like a Mr. Potato Head assembled by a toddler, people would make up stories too.
A Bird Designed by Committee
If you ask me, the ostrich feels like the result of a design committee where no one was on the same page:
- Engineer #1: “Let’s make it fast.”
- Engineer #2: “Let’s make it tall.”
- Engineer #3: “Let’s give it a tiny head.”
- Intern: “Should it fly?”
- Everyone else: uproarious laughter
- Manager: “Time’s up. Dust it with feathers and send it out.”
And voilà — the ostrich was born.
Yet… We Love Them Anyway
Despite all this — or because of it — ostriches are strangely lovable. They run like track stars on stilts, hiss like malfunctioning bicycle pumps, and manage to look both intimidating and ridiculous simultaneously. And when you see one up close on Block Island, all of its absurd design choices somehow make perfect sense.
You realize it’s proof that success in life doesn’t require grace, aerodynamics, or proportion.
Sometimes all you need is confidence, stamina, a prehistoric face, and the ability to kick a lion hard enough to make it rethink dinner.
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