Mother Nature sure has a way of showing the "smarter than you" types that she has a big bag of tricks to call on. I think this was a true case of underestimating your enemy and losing the battle as well as the war!
The Emu War
This is perhaps the only formal war where one of the belligerents was not human, but rather avian. In 1932, the emu population in Australia was growing out of control, with an estimated 20,000 emus running around the Australian desert and causing havoc among crops. In response, the Australian military sent out a task force of soldiers armed with machine guns to kill the emus and even jokingly declared war on them. In mid-November they drove out into the desert and proceeded to hunt down any emus they could find. However, they ran into complications; the emus proved remarkably resilient, even when struck by multiple machine gun bullets they continued to run away, easily outstripping the heavily laden soldiers. The Emu War lasted for nearly a week before Major Meredith, the commander of the emu-killing task-force gave up in disgust after the soldiers only bagged a fraction of the elusive birds.
War duration: (November 11-18 1932) Seven days.
Casualties: 2,500 emus.
I would say that this time the Emu warriors got the best of the Australian Task Force! Guess it might be said that the avian troops flipped them the bird!
Let's have coffee in the kitchen this morning. I just watered the plants on the patio, and the furniture is a little wet!
