[div style="overflow: auto; width: 100%;"]The town of Innisfail, Queensland, Australia, survived Cyclone Larry only to face a new problem: hungry marauding cassowaries....[/p][blockquote][em]The critically endangered and famously testy flightless bird, known for its ability to disembowel humans with its razor-sharp claws, is running amok through the backyards and suburban streets of north Queensland in search of food.[/em][/p] [em]The birds are believed to have left rainforest areas after much of the fruit-bearing plants they depend on were knocked down by Larry's 260km/h winds.[/em] [/p][em]Meanwhile, roaming cassowaries are reported to have chased several residents through town. One recently fell into a backyard swimming pool and had to be rescued.[/em] [/p] [/blockquote] [hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;"] [h1]Killer birds raid Cyclone Larry town[/h1][div style="width: 319px;" id="leadStoryOuterRight"][div style="width: 299px;" id="leadPhotoOuter"] [img]http://network.news.com.au/image/0,10114,5160591,00.jpg" title="cassowary / eddie safarik" alt="cassowary / eddie safarik" border="0" height="431" width="287"] [div class="photoCaption"][font size="1"] Visitor ... Jan Shang keeps a close watch on a visiting cassowary as she attends to chores. Picture: Eddie Safarik [/font][/div][/div][/div][/div] [p class="storyBodyInitial"]They have borne Cyclone Larry and weeks of torrential rain, but now the luckless residents of Innisfail face a new dilemma, a posse of hungry marauding cassowaries.[/p] The critically endangered and famously testy flightless bird, known for its ability to disembowel humans with its razor-sharp claws, is running amok through the backyards and suburban streets of north Queensland in search of food. The birds are believed to have left rainforest areas after much of the fruit-bearing plants they depend on were knocked down by Larry's 260km/h winds. [/p]It is expected to be months before the birds' food sources begin to replenish. [/p]Meanwhile, roaming cassowaries are reported to have chased several residents through town. One recently fell into a backyard swimming pool and had to be rescued.
The people of Innisfail and surrounds have now been warned not to feed the birds.
Queensland Parks and Wildlife rangers have set up food stations throughout the cyclone-affected region to entice cassowaries back into the forests and save them from being hit by cars or chased by dogs. At least six cassowaries have died in the Mission Beach region, south of Innisfail, since the cyclone, all struck by cars. [/p]The birds are vital to the survival of the World Heritage-listed wet tropics rainforest because they are the only animals capable of distributing the seeds of more than 70 species of trees whose fruit is too large for any other forest-dwelling animal to eat and thus relocate. There are less than 1200 cassowaries left in Australia. [/p]Rangers had to remove roadside feeding stations in the weeks after Larry because too many of the endangered birds were being drawn to traffic. Smaller birds found in suburban streets are being relocated into rainforest areas. [/p]While the hungry birds are causing problems in Innisfail, Jan Shang is used to having them march through her backyard. Ms Shang and husband Percy have for years been visited by Faith, a female cassowary. [/p]"They don't bother me at all," she said. "They just walk through and I leave water for them, they take a sip of the water and continue on. "I was a bit put out they were being taken away but when you saw their droppings they had no food in it, so they must have been starving." [/p]While the rainforest around her home was denuded in the recent storm, Ms Shang said forest fruits were slowly beginning to grow back. During the evening, hundreds of flying foxes can also be seen hovering over Gordonvale, south of Cairns. The loss of their regular food sources has led them to raid backyard trees in search of fruit. [/p]
