SE-Ed: The Great Emu War

In 1932, the Australian army went to war. But the enemy wasn't another country. It was an army of birds. Emus! And, as you might have guessed, the birds won. After the First World War, many former soldiers were given land in Western Australia. They were encouraged to grow wheat, but then the Great Depression hit and prices crashed. Life was already hard. Then the emus arrived. Every year, emus travel inland after their breeding season. That year, around twenty thousand of them headed for the farms! They ate the wheat, trampled the crops, and smashed holes in the fences, which let rabbits in as well. The farmers, many of them ex-soldiers, knew exactly what they wanted. They asked the government for machine guns. Surprisingly, the Minister of Defence said yes! Major Meredith was sent with two soldiers and ten thousand bullets. In November, the operation finally began. But the emus didn't behave like an army at all. As soon as the shooting started, they scattered in all directions. One day, about a thousand birds came close, but then the gun jammed! Next, they tried mounting a gun on a truck. But emus can run at fifty kilometres an hour, and the ground was so bumpy that nobody could aim. Each group even seemed to have its own lookout! After less than a week, the army pulled out. The soldiers did return later, at the farmers' request. By December, Meredith reported almost a thousand birds killed. But that had taken nearly ten thousand bullets! That's about ten bullets for every single emu. Meredith later said that with soldiers as tough as these birds, he could face any army in the world. In the end, fences and rewards paid to farmers worked much better. And the emus? They're still doing just fine. So if anyone asks who won the Great Emu War, now you know the answer!