The great emu war.

Not emu war.

Emu war.

I hear you, Aussie suckers.

As World War I came to an end, Australia, whose economy was tanking,

tried to figure out what to do with their returning veterans.

They decided to give many of them parcels of land in Western Australia,

where they could grow wheat, and then the Great Depression hit.

It hit countries all over the world and few harder than Australia,

and it hit few Australians harder than many of those veteran farmers.

They now struggled to sell their wheat,

and then to make things even worse, emu's started showing up.

Lots of them.

Around 20,000, and they were real hungry.

And they figured out that wheat is pretty tasty.

No gluten-free diet for them.

They wanted all the gluten.

These new farmers were now being financially terrorized by a massive mob of emu's.

And yes, a mob is the technical term for a group of emu's.

These large, flightless, strange-looking, bumbling dinosaur birds,

tore through fences, ate crops, sometimes even attacked farmers,

especially if they spotted a shiny object on them, like a coin or a belt buckle.

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