Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 13 - The Great Emu War

Episode Date: August 20, 2018

On this episode we discuss the Great Emu War while simultaneously offending the entire nation of Australia probably. Follow us on twitter @Lions_by Donate to the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

These are some of the unfortunate farmers whose sweet crops have been trampled down by hordes of emus, but they're hopeful of getting rid of the pest at last. They've never used this sort of scarifier before, but things are desperate and it's war to a finish this time. The scouts of the advancing army have keen eyesight, and in order to get close to the main body, our lads have to do some real stalking, with the enemy watching events through their periscopes, raised up over the heads of corn. Now they're retiring, off at 40 miles an hour. Well, instead of the birds ruining the farmers, it seems the tables are turned, and there'll be no more damage done here for many a day to come.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe. I'm Nick. And we're doing another episode today. We are. How are you doing? Doing pretty good. Yeah.

You know, how's work for you? How's life? Life is good. I found out I accidentally wrote a bestselling novel, and I spend my free time trolling people about history and Facebook. It's been pretty good. Um, yeah,

I don't know either. Uh, I'm still kind of like when I found out I was just like sitting at my kitchen table and, uh, wasn't moving. And, have you ever like done anything and then just like forgot to breathe for a

long period of time? Yeah. Yeah. I did that. Just sitting there like, fuck. Oh yeah. In and out.

Yeah. It's like that really bad blonde joke when like the blonde woman just kills over and dies because her headphones fell off and they pick up the headphones and it just says, breathe in, breathe out. It's, you know,

those jokes are funny. Never. they were never funny um so today's episode uh and we we kind of like said and i know i said a couple times on the twitter and i think i said at the end of the last podcast that we're gonna do like a a palate cleanser uh because i i literally spent hours watching like liberian civil war combat footage and like interviews and watching child war veterans smoking fucking horse in a slum like it's kind of rough and all those like i read a lot of firsthand accounts and uh you know i would like to think of my my sympathy my sympathetic or like compassionate side of my brain is pretty well and dead after years of being in the military and everything like that and working in an ambulance but um like i legitimately had dreams about it and they weren't good uh so I would hope they're not.

Never in my life was I ever like, I really need to drink some child blood. I really need to smoke this heroin on some tin foil. Jesus Christ. That shit still is weird to me. Anyway, so today's episode brings us to the land down under. And the land of... Australia! The land of terrible

fake Australian accents that Nick's gonna try out for the next hour you're gonna do it you were doing it before we started to record you have to do it now fucking terrible accents I know it but I might who knows the old crow might hit me the old crow always hits

just right it's fucking lit like a candle in here also nobody hated on me for this but the last the old crow always hits just right it's fucking lit like a candle in here also nobody hated on me for this but the last episode is um the first time and maybe the only time in my life where i called a war criminal thicker than a snicker i'm not proud of that but nobody called me i don't think you should it's not not a thing. Everybody knows why they're here. Nobody wants to be like, hey, that Eichmann has some thunder thighs. But, you know, here comes me. Really, really bad jokes.

So today's episode is on what I am aware of is the only declared war against non-humans. That is the Emu War. It's not starship troopers the arachnids were a threat I remember bringing this area I'll never forget mobile infantry dog hashtag never forget

it's probably also the only time in history that like somebody lost a fight to a flightless bird like yeah we're gonna get there um obviously this wasn't a real declared war the government did not there was no declaration no they didn't like pen so it was illegal the parliament got together like had a vote like that didn't happen um so if you remember back to our bonus army episode which i end up bringing up a lot then a lot more than the other episodes for reasons i'm not entirely sure i think because

people don't like that i wanted to punch pat in the face i have to defend myself so i use the bonus army episode a lot i liked it um i'm a fan uh you'll remember the riveting account that i gave about how veterans benefits worked uh back at the turn of the century. Some countries like the US figured out that gifting large tracts of land to veterans was unsustainable and switched to a monetary based benefit system. Other places did not.

Australia is one of those places. Why? Maybe because it's like a vast tract of nothing. Probably shitty shitty clay a shit ton of spiders yeah like i i don't think they measured out uh mileage or like hectares they're like you get approximately 300 different species of dangerous animal and you're like enjoy yeah which equals out to be about an acre yeah um uh and i know personally that was my favorite part of the bonus army episode was talking about veterans benefits um so we're gonna make this part pretty fast um so the great war had just ended and uh that is

world war one for people who aren't trying to sound smart um It's a fake attempt to sound like an intellectual. I call it the Great War. Also, it's a really cool YouTube series I recommend. Yeah, it is. You can actually get away with citing it on graduate papers like I just did last week. I escaped. But certain a half million Australians returned home. It should be noted that number is out of a population of only about

five million so a sizable amount of the population left and is now coming back and they all want some of that sweet sweet dirt yeah that's that was part of it is still part of their pension program sweet red clay yeah give me that tract of barren wasteland that i've always wanted it's like because you know what somebody says is like i I'd really like to own a large track of Arizona. Nobody says that. I know a few. Sadly. It's only because they want to shoot people on the border.

You're not wrong. So somehow also a large part of this population was British veterans. I couldn't find any really reason why they were allowed to come in and say hey i want land too um i'm assuming it's an old commonwealth yeah i'm assuming it's old commonwealth agreement yeah um that somebody dusted off some papers and was like this old law that nobody remembers give me some of that dirt too man that's like a

lot of that texas law bullshit that's like every list of stupid laws anybody like your weird old aunt posts on facebook like did you know in michigan oral sex is illegal like is it yeah what yeah i mean there's no like blowjob police kicking in people's doors yet get off that pecker yeah put it down put the dick down and step away um so yeah all you gotta have all these veterans coming back and uh wanting land and australia didn't fuck them over like not like our government didn't fight them over they're like sure we have all this land out in western australia you have this shitty land here have this grip of outback to develop right it's kind of like uh sounds like a good idea for a restaurant chain the grip of outback yeah outback steakhouse except the only thing we serve is scorpions and misery a little bit of red clay

on the side yeah and you know this is kind of like the um the homesteaders or like yeah we'll we'll give you land, just you have to do something with it, except it's Australian version, so it's much more venomous and awful. Thankfully for them, all of Western Australia is up for grabs, and that's where the majority of the veterans land end up being. The soldiers, having nothing else to do in the area, decided to take up farming land. Surprisingly enough, not good for farming. else to do in the area just had to take up farming land surprisingly enough not good for farming it was irritable sure but it wasn't like bountiful cropland like they knew they could grow stuff on it but they really had to try um yeah you really had to work yeah um which thankfully these being soldiers who just spent years digging trenches they're good at manual labor. Yeah. Wouldn't,

you know, and they ended up being a bad choice. And while it was not great for farming, the veterans not having many other choices, scratched down existence. I mean, their monetary benefits were shit, right?

They were more than exactly going to go get, you know, whatever other benefits that our veterans got time, which is a little bit more on the money side. Okay. So the land was pretty much it. And I couldn't sell it because a half million other people has got a whole bunch of free land. The market's kind of shit.

So they're stuck with it. Along with the lands kind of shit. The land is also shit. Unless, unless you're farming death. Like I got a whole crop full of rattlesnakes. So my vipers are coming in great this year. Next season's rattle.

Yeah. So what did they farm most of the time i don't know if you it was mostly wheat um because um i mean food crops uh they were really badly needed um from years of uh government rationing during the war stuff like that um and then the depression hit the great depression hit the world in around 1929 and the government panic um you see the rest of the world felt the crunch of this depression not not some some worse than others but all they all felt it um and the way they tried to generate revenue and to spark their own economy was tariffs that sounds familiar you've been watching the news so they raised tariffs on food which made it harder

to trade and only made the situation worse Australia found itself wondering where the hell it was going to make up for all the lost food crop since they couldn't import anything anymore they couldn't afford it every time they imported food they lost money no matter how much so say they

I'm going to go with soybeans because that's a huge crap for the u.s say they were they were supposed to import millions of tons of soybeans into australia um and then sell them at market to people who use them to make fucking edamame i don't know um uh well suddenly that's way more expensive they'd have to jack up the price of those soybeans to the point that nobody's ever going to want them right um so they did the only thing they could and they're like hey we got all these farmers out west who are make them all grow wheat um everybody no matter what you're doing slash everything else grow wheat um the government promised massive subsidies for this because you're going to lose a lot of money slashing and burning and then planning it's not like it grows overnight you know they have to like pump a ton of money into

this uh ecosystem to make sure that the farmers aren't going to die or at least make them something resembling happy um i wouldn't be happy right nobody really was but i mean the the subsidies are supposed to be pretty good like it was going to make up for it in the long run it was ever say like what it would get uh money that um never came it just didn't happen so unfortunately they finally came to the conclusion like sorry guys we're all out of fucking queen dollars or dollary dues uh so you're not getting your subsidies so now you have all these pissed off farmers and fields and fields of unused wheat with shitty land. And you know, this is a free market society.

So what happens with an abundance of supply? The price collapses entirely. You have all these dudes out west who are trying to sell this tons of wheat. Now they just can't get rid of because them and their six other neighbors are trying to pawn off all their fucking wheat. It's worth nothing.

Everybody's got wheat. Yeah. Everybody's got wheat. Who's got any fucking money? Nobody wants wheat. They just have it. So what can make the situation worse? If you're going to like make a top three,

what can make the situation worse? Other than being in Australia? Yeah. At the turn of like, you know, pre world war two Australia. What can make the situation worse i would say a bad season

bad season okay let's go with fire because i see that with australia is australia it's like the california in the middle of the ocean if you fart too hard tanzania catches on fire tasmania said tanzania anyway there's already venomous animals i don't know you

give me the three or Or maybe a one. Who knows? I bet you didn't think emus. Emus, you fuck. Emus. Hard you. I'm gonna say emus because I'm American. I was gonna say that too. So, emus. Thousands and thousands of emus. Tens of fucking thousands.

Yes. Descended on the Campion District of Western Australia like some kind of feathery biblical plague out of nowhere. Nobody saw this coming. It had never happened before. But like just surprise emu attack. Generally emus were

supposed to migrate towards the coast after the breeding season but something happened since then in the way and that was suddenly thousands of farmers had propped up irrigation systems and cleared land out and made all these crops, which emus apparently decided emu high command got together. Yeah. And so he was there, said, you know, fuck this further migration shit. We got everything we need right here. We're moving in.

And farms end up being attractive emu getaway it turned out um the emus at this point we're around 20 000 20 000 strong berlini at the head ready to go yeah sabers rattling long awkward backward bending legs you know it's like the most awkward plague ever like you got locusts you got sparrows and you got these fucking weird six foot tall chickens gangly fucking turkey looking motherfuckers yeah so the emus would ravage the crops wherever they went and the ones they didn't eat they would just destroy like i feel like they were ill-tempered emus fuck you're a crop yeah they would just it was like a a wildfire pull through.

They even destroyed structures by moving in and digging around and stuff. Because like when there's no crops, they would dig for seeds. Well, apparently emus can dig straight through floorboards. Never would have known that. This could be now, the show always prides itself on historical accuracy.

This could be anti-emu propaganda. This could be anti-emu propaganda. This could be anti-emu propaganda. We don't know. Yeah. I assume the birds were just assholes. Birds in general are assholes. They really are.

I mean, have you ever had to run in with a swan? Yes. Or a goose? They're dicks. Where I used to live after I moved out of L.A. It was Riverside. And there was this apartment complex called Swan Lake. It was a shitty man-made lake with a shit ton of swans in it.

They were fucking assholes. Because you walk along the fucking street, they'll be like, why are you on my turf? Why are you on my turf? I'm like, hey, look, I just got out of L.A. And they fucking scream at you. Yeah. They're annoying as fuck. They smell like shit. They'll shit on everything. They don't give a fuck. And they fucking scream at you. Yeah. They're annoying as fuck. They smell like shit.

Shit on everything. They don't give a fuck. And they'll attack you. They've actually killed people. Have they? Yeah. Like when I grew up in Michigan, so we get Canadian geese all the time. And they would like you'd be out paddling on whatever lake, you know, we have so many

fucking like they're a lot more polite. No, it's like it's like somehow Canada is such a nice country and like the early BC era they're like gentlemen get together I have this idea like a Canadian wizard get everybody together like we're gonna transfer out all of

our ill tempered and all of our angers into this weird looking bird over here and that's how fucking Canadian geese are formed like they're just the sponge of all Canadian hatred and misery and rage and that's

how you get a Canadian geese I like that one and they would like there's a guy who's on his paddle boat on some lake I don't remember what lake. And he floated near, not like through, near, like

goose adjacent. And the geese with their goslings in tow flipped out and attacked them, knocked his boat over, and he couldn't come back up to the surface, and he drowned. Probably held him underwater. Yeah, just like wait for the bubbles to go.

They're like teaching their kids how to be assholes. Their fucking shoulders just... Now listen here, little Pete. You have to hold his head under until the bubbles stop. Quack. Bringing this back, the emus. So this is... They also had another issue.

And I know as deep scholars such as ourselves, you know, quite a bit about, uh, Australia's invasive species problem. You don't have to answer me. I know you do. You're a scholar and a gentleman anyway. Uh, so thank you. Uh, Australia is full of so many invasive species that they made a Simpsons episode out of it.

It's like the one thing that the Simpsons didn't do first. I think Bart brings a frog to Australia and it just takes over. But there's a real life thing that's just like that in Australia. And it's rabbits. Somebody in like the 17 or 18 hunts brought a fucking rabbit to Australia. And they just set about doing rabbits do best just fuck endlessly um once that they got to their you know population numbers nothing stood in their way they had no natural predators and you think you know for a fucking

snake they can kill a man every 10 feet they'd be able to take rabbits out but they just outnumbered everything um in 1907 they attempted to construct a giant fence across Western Australia to keep them out of the farmlands. These are the rabbits. So they tried to create like a great wall of Western Australia. To keep out rabbits, they just fucking dug under. Yeah. So they built it again, made it go really far on the ground, and it worked pretty well. Well, these emus stormed through and destroyed the goddamn fence.

Yeah, because they're big, giant assholes. So the emus came through. So the emus are like the cavalry of, like, the Narnia army here going on in Australia. They kick open the fence, and then their light infantry rabbit compatriots come bursting through the holes in the line.

And that's... Fuck, they're coordinated. All jokes aside, that's kind of what happened Australia got so desperate about these rabbits that they resorted to biological warfare against them in the 1950s and introduced a special virus to the population that literally made them bleed from the inside out to death

it was kind of like Ebola but only affected rabbits it killed hundreds of thousands of them but only affected rabbits. Um, it killed hundreds of thousands of them, but the ones that didn't kill, it just made immune to the illness. So all they did is breed a bigger, stronger breed of rabbits. Yes,

exactly. Uh, this had, yeah, like I said, this happened so many times that they literally made a Simpsons episode out of it where, uh,

uh, Bart, I think Bart went to Australia just to check to see if the toilets flushed the opposite way and he brought him just like how the burgers are upside down yeah fucking monsters um and then he brought a frog with him who ended up getting out and destroying the country um anyway back on the emu front these poor farmers went to the government to plead their case and ask for any kind of assistance. All jokes aside, in some areas,

the emus are literally destroying entire farms and no one could figure out how to stop them. They're like taking pot shots at them with your rifles and to slow them down. We're talking about a group of birds as literally equal to the size of an army division. Just to put this like back on military history side, like it's, it is a fucking offensive unit that has tens of thousands of birds

deep that are assholes and they like yeah i mean all these guys have weapons they're farmers and they're veterans but like a bolt-action rifle against 20 000 people you know you you and your you know son and your wife or whatever taking pot shots and i didn't do shit they're obviously breeding rapidly and they're eating all of your livelihood. So fucking huge. They are. They don't give a fuck. They're like six two. They're like a bird my size. Yeah. And they weigh like 80 pounds. So it's like a bird.

But they're also fast as shit. Yeah. They can run as fast as my Prius. So in 1932 fed up with government inaction and losing their homes to hordes and hordes of emus the veterans marched up to the nearest government office and demanded

they be allowed to solve this damn problem only way a group of world war 1 veterans know how machine guns yeah machine guns they were so great against us and why wouldn't they these guys are all veterans from Gallipoli. Which is even worse.

They fought as Anzac. So they saw some of the worst fighting in World War I. Gallipoli was a shit show. If anybody knew the destructive effectiveness of well-laid machine gun fire, it would be them. It could tear apart an invading army like them and it did surely these long necked fucks didn't stand a chance it's not like they were going to fly away they're flightless birds of all people

minister of defense Sir George Pierce completely agreed so he also was a World War I veteran and he solved all of his problems with machine guns just as his wife. Nice. He didn't actually kill his wife.

I just make him a joke. And if he did, I didn't find that in my research. So, you know, either way. He actually had ulterior motives as well. Being headed had been a long time since Australia found itself in the middle of an actual war, Pierce thought his soldiers would benefit from the opportunity of shooting something

that was alive and running away from them they just got out of World War I emus are obviously the perfect statement for humans we wouldn't argue that that'd be a ridiculous argument to make okay except that's not a comparison that would ever make

I guess except they're tall whatever the only caveat was the veterans would be relegated to providing food and lodging for regular soldiers who'd be coming to do the shooting uh the government of western australia saw another opportunity to show the poor beleaguered farmers how much they cared and how much they're going to ease their plight and their efforts to win the hearts and minds of the victims of this brutal emu siege, they hired an entire film crew from Fox Movietone to document their triumphant campaign against these flightless foes. The offensive began under the command of Major G.P.W. Meredith of the 7th Battery of the Royal Australian Artillery.

Along with Meredith came Sergeant S. McMurray and Gunner J. O'Halloran. I know what you're thinking. Artillery? Awesome. McMurray and Gunner J. O'Halloran. Now you're thinking, artillery? Awesome. Nice. Great idea. Not quite. Unfortunately, they were just going to be the armed soldiers at the time. And a lot of units actually during World War I put their machine gun units under their artillery command.

Australia just hadn't moved on from that quite yet. So it's not as cool as it sounds. They were armed with two Lewis guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition between them. I'm a little surprised that Australia, a country that wasn't above biological and chemical warfare and rabbits, was actually above dropping shells

on these guys. Maybe they were just out of artillery rounds? I don't know. Why 10,000 if there's a shit ton? They didn't want to completely fucking genocide. They were going to eradicate emails. They were just going to like, I feel like even then, 10,000 isn't much.

I mean, even at 100% effectiveness, that's still only 50% decrease. Even then. And as we'll find out, they were not even close to being 50% accurate. No. The Lewis gun, the machine gun,

they chose to do their duty was a British design to manufacture a light machine gun. That's well known for its distinctive top loaded pan magazine and low and giant barrel shroud. That looks like some kind of steampunk means sci-fi cannon. It is pretty mean. If like, you don't know anything about historical firearms and you look at it,

you think it's like some ye olde version of a belt fed grenade launcher it's pretty mean looking um it was used in the tens of thousands during world war one and is renowned for the war in the war for its reliability and destructive power which of course begs the question

what were the emus armed with nothing obviously they're emus they're fucking tanks their maximum effective range of an emu doesn't really match up to that of a light machine gun I know that might be jarring for some to hear though they

were 6'2 generally about 6 foot 2 inches tall way around 90 pounds and could probably peck the shit out of you if you're dumb enough to get too close. If they could fuck up some floorboards, I'm pretty sure they could fuck up somebody's skull. Yeah, I mean, like... So I guess what you're saying is, like, the emus are the scrappy underdog.

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, there's a whole list of animals I wouldn't want to fight in hand-to-hand combat. I don't know if I'd rank emus on it, becauseus on it because there's things like lions, tigers, and bears and everything else in between but like emus are pretty much an ostrich I wouldn't want to fuck with an ostrich I don't know

I guess on the scale of Australia animals here I would rather fight an emu than like a kangaroo kangaroos will fuck you up. Have you ever seen those videos? I don't know. The rabbits got numbers.

I'll fight one of them. You got to fight at least a hundred. I'll fight the leader. Then they'll all respect me. Do you ever watch Watership Down? It doesn't end well. They don't know. They'll be fine.

Have you not seen Watership Down? No, I haven't. Oh, my God. Need to see Watership Down. All right. I guess we'll watch it. It's literally a war movie with rabbits. What?

It's magnificent. Well, it's our usual once a week sleepover, so we might plug it in. Who knows? Yep. So. Here we are on the eve of the glorious battle,

and Meredith pulled his boys aside to give him a speech. Right off in glorious bastards. Channeling his inner Aldo reign, he says to each man he must bring him 100 emu skins. And I assume they weren't allowed to go home until he got his emu skins. God damn it, he wanted his

skins. He was gonna get them skins. Yeah. I'm not even kidding. His demand for skins are real. I didn't just make that up. He really wanted each person to get 100 emu skins, but he still only brought like four people. He didn't just make that up He really wanted each person to get 100 emu skins But he still only brought like 4 people He didn't bring much No

I mean I would imagine bringing like a baker's dozen Maybe a platoon But even then they only brought like 2 to 4 So a baker's dozen would be Better than that Yeah I get it Literally anything would have been better than this And this isn't from some strange backstory

where Meredith's family was stalked and murdered by a roaming band of emu thugs, leaving him in the care of the Royal Australian Artillery Regiment. That'd be a great movie. Except it'd be made by Disney or Pixar, so all the emus are like cute little cartoons and it's like Liam Neeson.

Cracking emu necks. I have a long list of skills. Quack. What? He wasn't like he didn't like join the Australian artillery to constantly train and hone his craft longing for the day where he'd have his emu revenge. No, that would be absurd, Nick. Why would you even think that? What?

It's because emu feathers actually were exactly what the light cavalry needed for their fancy new dress hats. It's funny that you say that. I was going to say that later. They needed some feathers for their fucking hats. So this might be the first hat based military campaign

they were just trying to look fabulous alright those feathers look great he's like on a hill somewhere high above the plains of wherever the fuck in western Australia god damn those are some fine feathers yeah

so Meredith's war machine of two guys rearing and ready to go Goddamn, those are some fine feathers. Yeah. So, Meredith's war machine of two guys rearing and ready to go. Nothing could slow them down. Except rain. Rain caused the emus to scatter, making it not so easy to shoot at them, so Meredith postponed the operation until November 2nd. Oh yeah, a little bit of rain. Then, Meredith

let loose as dogs of war. And it was about then that they realized that they never made any plans for what to do, and they actually got there. Do you need a plan for it, though? I mean, you still have to have some semblance of a plan. Like, we're going to deploy the guns here, we're going to shoot now. Something. He did literally nothing.

I mean, probably because he thought, alright, they're just fucking birds, let's just do this shit. That's probably what he was thinking. Well, like, they got to the area and then did nothing. They just sat around with their guns on a cart. Didn't really do anything. Eventually, local farmers tried to help out by herding the birds together for an ambush.

Only discovered that advanced emu military intelligent network had spoiled their plans, causing emus to scatter rather than herd and stick together. Bertolini was a smart guy yeah he doesn't get the credit that he deserves no he doesn't um now this is dumb from the get-go jokes aside emus aren't domesticated and uh they the reason why animals like sheep and cows and every other creature of the of a farm uh is liable to be herded by a dog is because it's a

trained instinct. Obviously these random emus don't have that instinct. The emus just didn't have any of their bullshit and scattered like dust in the wind at the first sign of danger. One of the gunners decided to open fire at the scouting birds anyway, only to find out

that emus were actually like the agent in the Matrix, and he hit absolutely nothing. Neo? Neo was an agent. He was the one. I thought you said Matrix. I didn't hear agent. I did say Matrix. Oh, okay. He's the agent from the Matrix. You know me. What movie did you watch?

The same one. Was Neo the bad guy in your movie? Sorry, I didn't hear you. I don't believe you. Other than that, good movie. I liked the first one. the other ones weren't too good they were so bad after being met with total defeat and as Meredith and his merry band of fuck ups buckled down

and planned for another ambush on November 4th they planned a massive killing zone near a local dam and over a thousand emus were spotted heading towards their position a statement that would would be terrifying pretty much in any other situation like you're defending a position it's you when your assistant gunner on a machine gun there's a thousand enemy moving towards you but they're

emus can't even picture it yeah that's i can't even picture a tall bird i've never seen a tall bird. I've never seen a tall bird. You've never seen like an ostrich in a zoo? No, I haven't. I've never been to the zoo. You've never been to the zoo? No. You... Sweet summer child. I haven't been to a lot of places.

Fuck you, dude. Everywhere has a zoo! Not if your family can't afford it. It's like five bucks! They didn't want to take it. The only people who go to zoo are poor people because it's cheaper than the movies I went to a fucking carnival at a church yeah those are free

I didn't fucking go anywhere as a kid I have to do everything now as an adult yeah I kind of do the same thing and now I don't even want to do it because I don't want to go see a bunch of animals you always say that when you're like a kid when I'm an adult and I have to go to school all the time I'm going to do everything I've always wanted to do it because I don't want to go see a bunch of animals. You always say that when you're like a kid. You're like, when I'm an adult, I don't have to go to school all the time. I'm going to do everything I've always wanted

to do. And you have like the weekend off from work and you're like, I'll sit on my couch. That's what I'm going to do. Pretty much. So the emus approach the position and the gunners wait until the emus got close. I'm assuming there's some rousing speech

about like, don't shoot until you see the brown of their beak. Or whatever. The lead gunner opened up a glorious blaze of machine gun fire. Of like five rounds and his gun jammed. Nice. Yeah. He killed about 12 birds though.

Oh, okay. After all that anticipation anticipation they forgot to clean their fucking machine guns could you imagine how like disgusting a fully lubed up world war one era machine gun would get being drugged along the fucking outback i can't yeah it's they gotta clear the bolt and it's like has like six or seven snakes in it if they go to pull the triggers the fucking tarantula crawls out the barrel the fucking red clay and a shit ton of fucking venomous animals um the other birds

seeing their blessed martyr sacrifice made a tactical retreat somewhere where assholes were shooting at them that was the end of the day they killed 12 birds after luring a thousand of them I'm assuming within decent machine gun range you shall write shiny in chrome

the glory of now things start to get creepy i know i made a dumb joke earlier about emu military intelligence i'm not gonna back up i'm not gonna back down from that but that actually began to take place i know what you're thinking you're talking about their leader bird bird salini so you call them bertolini bertolini yeah uh he existed apparently he did and he had a small unit leadership uh the emus quickly adapted to the war in which they found themselves and stopped gathering in large groups instead army observers said they could they would stay in small groups and one large emu I assume also like an emu major so like Meredith has a counterpart

would stand watch over them and warn when any humans came near. I want a picture that... The emu's literally adapted and overcame. Yeah, and I want a picture that that emu saw the major up in the fucking hills and they both stared at each other like a fucking game.

Clever girl. Yeah. That'd be fucking great. But it was probably some yoinked fucking oink. He moved like an eight pack and fists instead of a fucking two feet fists.

Meredith, not willing to be outsmarted by an army of birds, also attempted to adapt. He had his Lewis guns mounted on a truck and he would go on the offensive. Now, this isn't like a Humvee. This isn't even like a deuce and a half from World War Two. These are pre World War Two trucks. Suspensions made out what I'm assuming is balsa wood.

No shocks. It turns out this is a really bad idea. In the early 1930s, trucks were incredibly unreliable and slow, meaning the birds could literally outrun their truck. Yeah. To make matters worse, when they would attempt to storm across the outback in enemy formations,

the ride would be so drying the gunners wouldn't even be able to shoot. So I have a cool experience with that. Go on. So when I was a reenactor. Cosplayer. Cosplayer. No.

No. Sorry, you already said it once. That was for the fuck, alright? I'm not a fuck. So, poor that old crow. You know what? Old crow really gets the taste of failed military campaigns out of your mouth. You know what?

Old Crow really gets the taste of failed military campaigns out of your mouth. Ah. So I'm running around in a half track and I'm on the 30 cow, which is the 1919 that we had. There's no suspension on a half track. You ever seen one? There's none at all. Like a World War Two or two one. So there's none.

Absolutely nothing. So we're literally going over flat land, but you feel like you're going over some pretty cool dunes or something. It feels like you're re-entering the stratosphere, like whenever a Humvee gets over 20 miles an hour. Yeah. So I'm on the 1990s just fucking waving it around, basically. I'm just like, there's no point. I'm just going to sit down. This is stupid.

Yeah, they're just lucky the emus can return fire. They're lucky that the emus didn't receive aid they would have been fucked who would be like their ally in this situation the emus are distinctively not communist so the soviet union isn't coming

to their ankles I don't know like the greater union of tarantulas. I don't know. Would come to their aid and crawl at their ankles. I don't... Well, they had fucking bunnies as allies.

I don't see why they couldn't get somebody else. It was a loose alliance, though, because the bunnies never came to their aid ever again. That's true. It was like a one-time thing. Yeah, they were just lucky they didn't receive aid. Yeah. Who would aid them?

What would be their aid? We don't know. We're just lucky they didn't receive aid. Yeah. Who would aid them? What would be their aid? We don't know. We're just lucky. That Hitler would help them. Australia would be speaking fucking emu right now. Thank God for these brave heroes. Australia would be speaking emu. Parliament all gathers together.

The Prime Minister sits down down straightens his tie quack quack fuck where did we go wrong make Australia great again that's what the emu wore so the trucks didn't work they couldn't shoot at them

and the continued failures made the Australian House of Representatives look like fucking idiots so they got together on November 8th and decided this stupid shit had to end and remember they had to send journalists and camera people to document the whole

thing they had to document the hunting yeah meaning they had accidentally turned themselves into laughingstocks all around the country what's even worse is like they could have just not published it yeah no they could but they're just like eh fuck it this is pretty sweet we need to show the people a war effort progress on the same day they ordered the military withdraw its army from the field giving the emus the first and only tactical military history in human history. Meredith, in his defeat, praised

the emus, saying, and I swear to God this is a quote, Clever girl. Quote, if we had a military division with the bullet carrying capacity of these birds, it could face any army in the world.

They could face machine guns with the world they could face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks they're like Zulus who even dumb dumb bullets could not stop. Battlefield 1 horses. But emus. Yes also dumb dumb bullets are like old timey versions of hollow points

um Meredith also seriously pointed out we didn't technically fail we didn't lose a single soldier I fucking hope not she's getting fucking stomped on in your position you fall asleep in your sleeping bag

or whatever and you wake up there's an emu over there shh shh shh go to sleep bitch no tears only dreams she needs to get stomped on or pecked to death quack and i mean they had no pows but to be fair the emus never surrendered either that's true emus did not have a single man captured alive fucking master crease no mercy mercy dude crane style uh i mean you can't honestly believe that this is like a military

officer grasping for like one bright spot and yeah and like a total embarrassment digging for also he compared the birds to zulus that's like as racist as shit like you know these birds they're uh they're almost as good as zulus like he couldn't like compare them to like the army they just fought a couple years before he's gonna go to the last black dudes they fought in africa also the zulus routed an entire british field army these did just make these guys look like assholes. But I mean, was a treaty ever signed between them and the emus? Yeah. I'm unsure.

I'm sure a war. Now it's like it's an armistice. Yeah. It's like North and South Korea, except there's no Kim Jong bird. So there's also no 39th parallel. Yeah. Western Australia is a bloodbath. And still shitty looking.

Has a sweet rabbit fence. Nice honestly i don't know i've never been to western australia it could be completely emu controlled oh yeah we're not sure and anybody who says otherwise is a crisis actor hot take lukewarm take lukewarm take. Like everything in Australia. Everything in Australia is hot and poisonous. I feel like the water, if they even tried putting a little bit of ice in it, it'd probably be lukewarm. What? Alright.

Later on that same year, the Australian military would once again deploy in the field against Emu Menace. Again, it'd be under the command of Adrian Meredith. Him being obviously the Emu war expert on the continent the only one that went into battle with that he has experience right i'm assuming the other two guys are just like yeah go ahead and that's where i hope bertolini sees this fucking foe again on the hill good to see you again Bertolini quack and then there's like subtitles likewise

this would be a really good cartoon it needs to happen but like somehow it would be you know Morgan Freeman would be involved he would play the voice of the emu general quack

I don't know only morgan freeman can do morgan freeman's voice i feel like they'd have perfect subtitles for the emus but for the australians with their accents and all it would just be this every time every time he opened his mouth of sound of a didgeridoo would just come out it would just swear a lot of titles would just be question marks there's like a completely different level of swearing over here um this time though there's a fair amount of success um

Meredith on his also I could see like when Meredith left Western Australia it was like MacArthur leaving Philippines I will return yeah and the farmers were like please sir please it's like emus pushed them in the concentration camps. Meredith came back and they actually killed over 2000 emus this time.

Nice. So I'm assuming there's a plethora of emu related hats since their first mission is a complete failure. That's true. They did want the feathers. They still accomplish nothing though. After they pulled out, the emu just came back

and farmers were under siege again. And probably in one of the stranger statements in military history, Australian ornithologist Dominic Severntree said, quote, the machine gunner's dreams of point-blank fire into surried masses of emus are sur-dissipated. The emus' command

had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army. Emu tactics. Guerrilla emu tactics soon split up into an innumerable small units that made use of military equipment. Uneconomic, a crestfallen field force, therefore, withdrew from the combat area in about one month defeated. This was a quote from an ornithologist there's a dude that studies birds yeah for those who aren't sure they sure brought that dude along

right he would be like I don't know battlefield psychologist against emus I don't know he'd probably do a lot better than fucking major over here Meredith you know that dude never saw Lieutenant Colonel. No, after the fucking emu war? He goes to the promotion board like, so tell us about the emus.

Oh, you guys are still going on about the emus. Come on. That was years ago. One time. World War II rolls around like, you know what, Meredith? You can just stay at home. Yeah. These guys actually shoot.

The farmers repeatedly ask for help over and over again ever since because killing 2,000 out of 20,000 doesn't really do a whole lot throughout the years as the occupying emu force just refused to retreat the government refused to go down that road ever again however

instead they created a bounty system where each dead emu was worth a certain amount of money refused to retreat. The government refused to go down that road ever again, however. Instead, they created a bounty system where each dead emu was worth a certain amount of money. The veteran farmers suddenly found their calling that they'd always been missing and slaughtered 57,000 of the goddamn things in just seven months. Way better than the army. Yeah.

Like, I don't know, man. Well, I think I read something where they said the farmers would breed the emus and then turn in these emus for the bounty. Oh, I have no doubt. I would do that. That's probably

when they came out with the bounty some dudes were like, why don't we just fucking breed emus now? It's way more worthwhile than this goddamn wheat we have sitting around. So to close this episode I have a reading

in the memory of the fallen emu heroes. They went with songs to the battle. They were young straight of limb true of eye steady in a glow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted they fell with their faces to the foe they shall not grow old as we are left to grow old age shall not weary them nor the years condemn at the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them that was red you'd get playing in case anybody didn't pick that up that's great i love it uh so that's our fucking episode on emus i wanted to ask you like so what if australia would have won would they be a superpower because these motherfuckers couldn't do it you know i feel like this was the turning point um you know the u.s had the splitting of the atomic uh particle that created the weapon right the soviet union had the victory of world war ii

and then they also got the atomic bomb um australians had the emu war but they blinked they blinked nobody else blinked and uh that's why we all are currently living under the occupation of the people's Republic of Quack. Now I want to go to Australia. Western to be specific. This isn't actually the worst looking time

a military has ever been turned against an animal. But it's the first time we brought machine guns to it. China had the three pest campaign under Mao, which the army was totally involved in, but so was everybody else where they would kill locusts and sparrows. Wasn't there one in South America with goats? Goats?

I have to look that one up again. I read about it a long time ago. I feel like you're just being prejudiced against goats straight out the hip like that. I don't know any goats to be prejudiced against I don't know any goats either but doesn't mean you can't hate on them that's true

I mean there's worse animals you could fight I guess I mean like emus probably kill everything in Australia yeah but you know they they learn to grow around them I guess because snakes don't eat crops or something. They're just assholes.

It's just another long line of Australia losing to animals. I don't know how that country survived to the 21st century. It's hot as fuck. It's populated by poisonous creatures, rabid fucking emu armies, and criminals. Fucking dingoes hop over fences and steal babies. Did that really happen? From what I've heard? I thought the story was like she claimed a dingo still her baby,

but she just killed her baby. Or is that real? I don't know. I think it could be real. Honestly, in Australia. Why the fuck not? Yeah. Some fucking winged snake is going to swoop down and steal a baby.

Like a white Walker. Once it touches it it the baby also turns into a snake um but yeah that's our episode today um it was our our light-hearted palate cleanser after all all the cannibalistic genocide from last i wasn't really into the child raping you know i could go the rest of my life without reading the child rape ever again. But unfortunately, there was a plethora of it. Cornucopia of it. Oh, it's like the most depressing Thanksgiving display ever.

Yeah, it would be. Cornucopias can be big, but also just, just no, I never want to stop picturing that. Yeah. And I don't think I'm going to be that lucky

because I'm currently taking a graduate class about like wars in the antiquity and it's just like lousy with rape um but that's our episode for this week um huge shout out to Nate from the hell of a way to die podcast if you're not listening to

it you should probably listen to it thank you so much he mailed us this mic that is working magnificently oh yeah for poor Nick over there who's mic it is not shit on answer um um thank you

to everybody donating on the patreon um it's been kind of crazy yeah to think that people actually enjoy this. And have to pay for it. Like if you feel like our pocket, like I always say, our podcast will always be free.

If you feel like what we do is worth a dollar, even a single time, not reoccurring, whatever, you can give it to us on Patreon. We've already been using it to get a producer. We now have a producer that will be making all of our podcasts to get Nick a new mic rather than this loner and to get

some designs done for some possible shirts and stickers and stuff for the future which should be done soon ish nice right review us on iTunes that helps greatly and now that we actually finally got everything switch over to

SoundCloud makes everything a whole lot easier to share and like and everything. Oh, yeah. You know, Pinecast is great if you want to spend five bucks a month, but you get five bucks a month for it. Yeah. Also, iTunes is like really, really serious on how it takes its art requirements. It took three hours to get something to work last week. So I'm glad that's over in the ass.

Yeah. So follow us on Twitter, the podcast that lions underscore by I'm at J cast 99. I'm at Nick cast M one. And thank you for everybody. Yeah. Uh, that stops by and listens to our shit.

And thank you. We really appreciate it. Yeah. And thank you for making my book a number one bestseller. And you have to get mine signed right now in two different categories. I can't believe it. Uh, so thank you everybody.

And we will see you next week. Later.