Emmanuel, the TikTok-Famous Emu, Is Recovering from Bout with Avian Flu

Emmanuel Todd Lopez the emu is on the mend after catching a virus.

The TikTok-famous emu is slowly recovering after round-the-clock care, his owner Taylor Blake said Sunday in an update on TikTok, where Emmanuel's antics have reached viral fame on the @knucklebumpfarms account.

"EMMANUEL JUST DRANK WATER BY HIMSELF FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE BECOMING ILL. Please keep the prayers coming!" Blake wrote Sunday on Twitter with a video of the emu drinking from a bucket while hanging in his homemade sling.

Emmanuel was stricken with avian flu, along with almost every other bird on the farm. Blake posted an update Saturday on Twitter in a long thread that detailed the tragic event.

She wrote that after wild geese visited the farm, "99%" of their birds caught the avian flu and died. "We lost 50+ birds in one day," Blake wrote.

"I lost Emily, Eliza and Elliot. The virus hit them extremely hard and very quickly. I tried my best to save them, but I was unsuccessful. We lost every single chicken and duck on our farm. We lost all of our geese. We lost our 2 female black swans. We lost both of our turkeys," she added.

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A highly contagious strain of avian influenza has been confirmed in wild birds in 32 counties in Florida since January 2022, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission.

Blake also explained the farm was taking precautions and following guidelines to prevent the virus from infecting more birds or people.

When Emmanuel got sick on Wednesday, Blake said she spent every minute with the bird, hand-feeding him after the illness caused him to fall down, sustaining some nerve damage in his leg.

She and her girlfriend put together a makeshift sling for the emu which was a challenge, explaining: "I researched how to build a sling for an emu, but apparently there are absolutely zero resources for such a thing!"

Emmanuel, 7, has formed a close bond with Blake since moving to the farm as a young emu, and the pair's friendship makes their videos even sweeter. "I love the fact that he loves me," Blake told PEOPLE in August.

The friends start each day with hugs and kisses and often take mid-day naps together under a tree in the pasture.

"He genuinely loves me. He can be laying down somewhere in the pasture, and I can walk right up to him and lay down on the ground next to him and just cuddle him," she said. "He's just so great."

Blake started her TikTok account to showcase her grandparents' farm, which specializes in breeding micro Zebu and miniature Highland cattle. At first, Blake mostly posted videos of the farm's cute, cuddly baby cow to the TikTok account.

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But "all it took was an emu to really set things off," she said.

Emmanuel made one of his first appearances on the farm's TikTok in an outtake video Blake posted, where the bird interrupts the clip to stare at the screen. According to Blake, Emmanuel does not like phones. She thinks it's because the emu doesn't like when the attention isn't 100 percent focused on him.

By attacking Blake's phone on camera, Emmanuel has won the attention and hearts of the entire internet, helping the farm's TikTok account amass more than 1.8 million followers.