Ostrich!

Another fantastic vintage travel poster promoting South African tourism.  As soon as I saw this one I knew I just had to include it in the blog, because it features the ostriches of Oudtshoorn.  Oudtshoorn is a town in the Western Cape province and has the largest ostrich population in the world.  They're big birds with big personalities.  It's good fun to watch their handlers race them.  Even though they can't fly, they have extremely powerful legs and are very fast runners.  They'll use their wings as rudders to help them change direction while running at high speed.  An ostrich kick can kill a person or a potential predator, such as a lion.

When I was a child we would drive down to Cape Town for our summer vacations, instead of fly down.  A couple of times we made a stop en route at one of the ostrich breeding farms in Oudtshoorn... and I'm quite fond of this pic.

Taffy circa 1985