The Emu War
Australia wants to kill you. Fucking spiders and snakes and crocodiles and goddamn dinosaur birds that can run 30mph and kick the shit out of you with their razor feet. In 1932 there was an emu invasion in Western Australia, so Australia sent in the military. The military lost.
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: November 2, 1932--
In World War I, Australia sent 10% of her population into battle, and 15% of those guys died. Half of those who didn’t get dead were either wounded, gassed, or taken prisoner. Many who made it home were told hey thanks here’s some farmland in the barely inhabitable ass end of Australia. Then there was a depression, a great one. Then the emus showed up.
At least it wasn’t cassowaries. Cassowaries and emus are related, but the former are a lot heavier and way more pissed off. The emu will fight when necessary, and have injured and even killed people, but their greatest strength in this war was to run the fuck away. And yeah, they called it a war. The Great Emu War.
Shell-shocked former soldiers were growing wheat and then 20,000 goddamn migrating emus showed up and started eating and fouling the crops and ripping apart the fences that kept the damn bunnies out. And then the bunnies that some asshole European brought over the previous century who then bred like rabbits started to eat everything too and the farmers were like I survived Gallipoli for this?
The farmers, who were very familiar with the power of machineguns after having spent four years being shot at by them, asked the government, “Can we please have some fucking machineguns so we can kill these asshole birds?” The government didn’t want those guns in civilian hands because Australia is not America, so they sent in three soldiers and said to the farmers you have to feed and house them and pay for the ammo.
The first battle in the war took place on November 2, 1932. The soldiers spotted about 50 emus and commenced blasting away like a Texan who believes the Second Amendment is the word of God. Unlike soldiers at Gallipoli, the birds did not bravely charge headlong into machinegun fire. They split off into small groups and ran the fuck away at top speed. Smart.
They didn’t kill many, considering how many rounds were fired. Then they attempted to ambush the birds, but that didn’t work because the emus put out sentinels to watch for predators. Next the soldiers tried to mount the machineguns on a truck and chase down the emus, but the emus could outrun the truck over the rough ground. In the initial engagements they fired 2,500 rounds and killed only a couple hundred of the 20,000 emus. So much for one shot, one kill.
After four days they gave up, and the emus kept invading and the farmers said come on please do something and the government tried again, and again their kill-to-bullet-use ratio was shit so they said fuck it let’s just build better fences.
Those who cannot remember the past need a history teacher who says “fuck” a lot. Get both volumes of On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.
The story you just read is from Volume II. Cover image below:
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I'm not sure why North Americans are so terrified of Australian wildlife - we don't have mountain lions, grizzly (or any other type of) bears, wolves, rattlesnakes, coyotes, or a volcano that's well overdue to take out half the continent; pity it's nowhere near either Washington DC or Mar a Lago.
Yes, cassowaries are legitimately terrifying, but unless you hang out in remote dense tropical forests, you will never see one. I've actually spent years travelling in really remote bits of Australia, and I've never once seen one in the wild.
Also, the only time I've seen a snake with nothing between me and it was when we were collecting firewood with my in-laws. Yes, I shrieked, and they all laughed at me, because despite the fact that it was incredibly venomous, it was sound asleep because it was the middle of winter.
I did live for a year near where the Emu War occurred, and I'd like to say that if the current farmers' grandparents were as racist, misogynist and right wing as they are, good on the emus!
And now they sell insurance here in America!