On Saturday night, June 1, 2024, Shae Finn and her husband were doing yard work in Navarre, Florida, when their deaf neighbor urgently asked them to call 911.
Despite communication challenges, Shae called for help. As officers and EMS arrived to assist the neighbor, one officer noticed the couple’s emu, Marley, and asked to pet her. Shae recorded as Marley charmed the officers, who took selfies with her while waiting for EMS.
The lighthearted moment was captured in a TikTok video that went viral, gathering over 6 million views in one day. The video even reached Officer Ryan, who shared his emu selfie in a follow-up TikTok.
Saturday night our deaf neighbor came up to me and my husband while we were outside doing yard work, and he was asking for us to call 911. We weren’t entirely sure why, communication with him is very difficult as he can read/write very little and his writing is not legible, he can only utter sounds no clear words, and does not know a lot of sign language, but he was clearly signing for 911, so I thought it best to just call. When the sheriff got there we immediately started trying to figure out why he needed them, and the sheriff then called for ems. In the mean time other officers had arrived, along with the fire truck. While we were waiting on ems to arrive, one of the officers started looking around, and noticed there was a cut in our gate and that we had an emu. He asked if he could pet her, I said yes, and that’s when I started recording! I was a little nervous that Marley might be too interested in the shiny buttons and badges on the uniform so I showed officer Ryan how to push her neck away gently if she made him too uncomfortable. But she was fantastic! The whole time Marley was just standing there, hanging out, letting everyone pet and love on her. Even let officer Ryan throw his arm around her for a selfie like they have been life long buddies! The officers started coming up one by one to say hi to her and get their selfies, ems was working with our neighbor, and once they had him all loaded up everyone started to leave the scene. The first responding officer and officer Ryan finished the conversation with me and my husband about Marley, we said thank you for coming out, and they went on their way! I sent the videos I had taken to my family laughing at the cops petting Marley (the emu) but once they left I thought I’d make a video of it all. I was definitely not expecting it to blow up the way it has haha! Because it went so viral, the video made its way to officer Ryan. He was able to get in contact with me and share his selfie with me! He then made his own TikTok video sharing the emu selfie he took! It has now become such a wholesome way to humanize law enforcement in the public eye, and I think that’s pretty awesome. Also I am happy to report that the neighbor who needed ems is okay! He is already back to patrolling the neighborhood, he came up to my husband when he got home from work this afternoon and thanked him. I got a great idea from a commenter on the viral video, and I will now be making photo cards to give to our neighbor as a gift. This way he can more easily communicate with anyone he meets using these cards! Think emoji flash cards haha. I plan to follow up with an update video on that!
