Note: The following article is historical satire and should not be taken seriously or used as a source for factual historical events.
The Great Emu War of 1932
When looking back at humanity's history, there have been countless wars, and they usually follow the same pattern. Two sides have a disagreement, they fight, one side emerges victorious, a treaty is signed, and eventually everything turns out fine. Grrr... errr... for the most part.
One conflict stands out to me because of how unusual it was: the Emu War. Bravely fought by both the Australian military and the emus of the outback, it began when the growing emu population became a serious nuisance for Australian farmers.
Now, personally, I hate the taste of emu. Far too gamey. Several of my kin, however, absolutely love it. Perhaps they should have hunted more of them, it would have helped those farmers quite a bit. Hmmm... where was I? Ah, right.
Since the dragon population was apparently not doing a sufficient job of hunting emus, the farmers turned to the Australian government for help. Rather than going to the Department of Agriculture, they requested military assistance in culling the birds. If they truly needed that much help, they could have simply asked their local dragons to be more diligent, but that's beside the point.
The Australian military rolled out with two machine guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition. The first battle of the war took place at Campion. While the troops were attempting to sneak up on a large group of emus, some of us dragons thought it would be amusing to give the birds a bit of a scare. Roaring as loudly as we could, we sent the emus scattering in every direction. The soldiers did their best and managed to kill several birds, but the opportunity for a decisive strike was lost. The soldiers were not pleased with us, but what exactly were they going to do about it?
The next engagement occurred somewhere near a dam. Honestly, the soldiers were simply having terrible luck, because the moment they opened fire, their machine guns jammed.
After this failure, we graciously offered to help the farmers with their emu problem, but they refused, insisting it was a human matter or something along those lines. One of my kin suggested that if humans were faster, they could simply chase down the emus themselves. Since they couldn't fly, however, it was difficult to see how they planned to accomplish that.
Then one of the generals had a brilliant idea: mount a machine gun on the back of a truck and drive after the emus.
This gave us dragons quite a laugh.
As the truck bounced wildly across the rough terrain in pursuit of the birds, the poor gunner could barely stay in his seat, let alone aim. The entire operation looked less like a military campaign and more like a traveling circus. Eventually, the truck flipped over, and we were kind enough to help the unfortunate fellows out.
Now imagine how much easier things would have been if they had accepted our offer. But humans rarely learn from their mistakes.
Anyway, after the debacle of the first attempt, the soldiers returned to the field and achieved some modest success. Yet when everything was finally over, the exact number of emus killed remained a matter of debate. Herrgg... even the humans couldn't seem to agree on it. But if you ask this old dragon, I'd say the overall effect on the emu population was minimal.
Eventually, the farmers and the government swallowed their pride and introduced a bounty system for both humans and dragons. This proved far more effective at reducing the emu population than the military campaign had been.
The lesson to be learned from all this is simple, we dragons can solve just about any problem better than humans ever could.
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