Hæren der tabte til fugle

En hær tabte engang til fugle. Send dette til den ven der siger historie er kedeligt. Sidst i nitten toogtredive var hvedebønder i det vestlige Australien ved at miste deres afgrøde til emuer, høje flyveudygtige fugle der var ankommet i tusindvis på jagt efter vand og havde fundet marker fulde af korn i stedet.

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.

Bønderne bad regeringen om hjælp, og regeringen sendte soldater med to maskingeværer og ti tusind patroner. På papiret var det ikke en fair kamp. Ude på markerne gik det ganske anderledes. Emuer løber hurtigt, drejer skarpt og kræver en hel del for at stoppe, og efter de første salver brød flokkene op i små spredte grupper og fortsatte bare med at bevæge sig. Geværerne klemte sig fast. En lastbil blev forsøgt, og jorden var alt for ujævn til at sigte fra.

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.

Efter omkring en måned tog soldaterne hjem. Færre end tusind fugle var blevet dræbt ud af en flok mange gange så stor, aviser rundt om i verden havde en herlig tid med historien, og emuerne, der aldrig vidste at der var blevet erklæret krig, gik tilbage til at spise hveden.

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.