Bryan Kent Hurst, age 7, of Logan, W. Virginia, for his question:

What is an emu?

When you see the emu, you might think that he is an ostrich. He is a very big, bulky bird with long legs and a long neck. He may stand six feet tall and weigh 100 pounds. The great ostrich is the biggest bird in the world. But the emu is the second biggest. You might expect him to have enormous wings, but he does not. They are very small, weak wings almost hidden in his fluffy feathers.

Neither the ostrich nor the emu can fly. But both of them are champion runners. The ostrich runs across the plains of Africa. The native home of the emu is Australia. There the people admire him so much that they chose him to be their national bird. The Australian coat of arms has a picture of a kangaroo on one side    and on the other side is a picture of an emu.