Why were Australian soldiers sent against birds?

Soldiers, weapons and, in front, large birds unable to fly. The scene seems invented for a comedy. It corresponds to an operation conducted in Western Australia against emus accused of damaging crops.

A sequence preserved by the State Library of Western Australia shows this intervention in the Campion area. The notice describes the shooting and a car chase. It also indicates that the efforts were largely unsuccessful and that farmers still asked for military assistance in the following years.

The episode is known as the war of the emus. It was not a declaration of war in the diplomatic sense, nor was it an organized army of birds. The nickname works because the means used seemed to promise a simple result. The reality of moving animals scattered across a vast landscape has resisted this idea.