The Southern Cassowary is AWESOME.

Some people I know and I and no one else (except 10 million babies in strollers and their parents) took a trip to the National Zoo in DC this past weekend, a rather exhausting 5 hour walking-around-without-sitting-and-dealing-with-throngs-of-adolescents excursion, but hey I hadn’t been there since I was an intern at the Baltimore Zoo – oops sorry Maryland Zoo in Baltimore so it was worth it. Anyway, amidst the hundreds of exhibits we photographed and gawked at vacantly, one of my favorites would have to be the Double-Wattled (Southern) Cassowary, a flightless bird native to New Guinea.

Why is this bird one of my favorites, you may ask? Well, maybe because it’s built like a brick shithouse and could end you with a single kick of its 4.9 inch dagger toe. Yeah, it has a dagger toe. A dagger toe. And a big ass horn. This thing is basically as close to a dinosaur as you’re going to get without digging up amber in a mine somewhere and sparing no expense and creating a dystopian theme park that totally backfires and kills everyone. THAT’S why it’s one of my favorites.

Personally, I’d like to have one of these engines of awesome as a guard dog. But I’m pretty sure there are like, rules against that since they’re non-native, almost extinct and probably ten times more badass than any stupid Pit Bull that so many citizens of Baltimore feel they need to own in order to be adequate in the manliness department.Whatever, for the time being I’m happy knowing that these birds are out there somewhere, flip kicking dogs that try to steal their fruit or sniff around where they don’t belong. YEAH. LOOK AT THIS THING, IT IS AWESOME.