Vojska koja je izgubila od ptica

Vojska je jednom izgubila od ptica. Pošalji ovo prijatelju koji kaže da je povijest dosadna. Krajem tisuću devetsto trideset druge godine, uzgajivači pšenice u zapadnoj Australiji gubili su usjev od emua, visokih neletećih ptica koje su stigle u tisućama tražeći vodu i umjesto nje pronašle polja žita.

An army once lost to birds. Send this to the friend who says history is dull. In late nineteen thirty-two, wheat farmers in Western Australia were losing their crop to emus, tall flightless birds that had arrived in their thousands looking for water and found fields of grain instead.

Uzgajivači su zatražili pomoć od vlade, a vlada je poslala vojnike s dva strojna oružja i deset tisuća metaka. Na papiru to nije bila poštena borba. Na poljima je to izgledalo sasvim drugačije. Emui trče brzo, oštro skreću i teško ih je zaustaviti, pa su se nakon prvih rafala jata razbila u male raspršene skupine i jednostavno nastavila kretati. Oružja su zapinjala. Pokušali su s kamionom, ali teren je bio previše neravan za nišanjenje.

The farmers asked the government for help, and the government sent soldiers with two machine guns and ten thousand rounds of ammunition. On paper it was not a fair fight. In the fields it went rather differently. Emus run fast, turn sharply and take a great deal of stopping, and after the first bursts of fire the flocks broke into small scattered groups and simply kept moving. The guns jammed. A truck was tried, and the ground was far too rough to aim from.

Nakon otprilike mjesec dana vojnici su otišli kući. Ubijeno je manje od tisuću ptica od mnogo veće gomile, novine diljem svijeta divno su se provele s tom pričom, a emui, koji nikad nisu saznali da im je objavljen rat, vratili su se jesti pšenicu.

After about a month the soldiers went home. Fewer than one thousand birds had been killed out of a crowd many times that size, newspapers around the world had a wonderful time with the story, and the emus, who never knew that war had been declared, went back to eating the wheat.