Photo: Ostrich screengrab from video, Philippine Chicken Adobo / Wikicommons" width="100%" />
It is what it is.
One of the two ostriches that went viral after running around a Quezon City gated community last week has not only died of stress but was also cooked into adobo, the lawyer of the bird’s owner confirmed yesterday.
Attorney Charlie Pascual told Manila Bulletin that Jonathan Cruz, the bird’s owner, instructed his caretakers to bury the dead ostrich. But upon checking with the caretakers the next day, Cruz learned that they decided to cook it because they thought the fowl’s carcass shouldn’t go to waste.
Read: 2020 Gets Weirder: Ostrich runs loose in Quezon City
The lawyer described Cruz as someone from a “quiet, decent family” who didn’t mean to cause a commotion when he bought the birds from an ostrich farm in Misamis Oriental. Cruz wanted to open a farm in Nueva Ecija where the ostriches were meant to be transferred but the COVID-19 quarantine prevented him from transporting the birds out of Quezon City.
An animal rights group asked the government to revoke Cruz’s permit, saying that he was “unfit” to care for the wild birds because they were left to roam around without any of the caretakers chasing after them.
One of the caretakers actually ended up resigning from his job when the two birds bolted from their enclosure, Pascual said.
Cruz told the Department of Environment and Natural Resources on Monday that one of the birds died of stress when he was summoned by the government agency to explain why the ostriches escaped.
