But Olenik says emus are better than dogs.

 But Olenik says emus are better than dogs.

After his brother died of a heart attack in 2019 and his father passed away of lung cancer in 2021, Olenik didn’t know how to cope. At the same time, his home maintenance business didn’t survive the pandemic, so he’d just sleep in late and watch TV as his wife went to work and his teenage daughter went to school. He says he was "down and depressed."

“Every doctor just wanted to give me drugs, and I didn’t want them,” Olenik recalls, noting he doesn’t even like taking Tylenol.

When a friend and his wife retired from the military and started a farm in Tennessee to help with their PTSD, they got an emu. That’s how Olenik first got the idea to get one, too. He says his psychotherapist supported the idea.

He bought an egg at an emu farm near his house and brought the chick home in January 2023 after it hatched.

Emus start out as tiny chicks, but grow quickly and can weigh up to 100 pounds and stand almost 6 feet tall as adults. (Courtesy Nicholas Olenik)

Like the rest of the animals in his household, which include turtles, dogs and cats, the tiny female bird was named after a character in “Dragon Ball Z,” an anime TV series, and became known as Nimbus.

The emu lived in the house with the family, and used a doggy door to go outside as she pleased.

The emu got along well with the family's other animals. (Courtesy Nicholas Olenik)

When she grew bigger, the family would open the screen door for her to let her out into the backyard. The houses in the area, including his, sit on about a quarter acre of land, Olenik says. The emu had a harness and a leash for when he took her on walks around the neighborhood.