By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Christmas Birds
Civilized wildlife abounds in these parts, especially with Christmas coming. Hence a Tri-Community Wildlife Committee was born to save us from their/our excesses.
The Australian outback saw a similar fate after World War I “soldier settlers” were incentivized to build farms there, prompting native emus to feast on new residents’ fields and gardens.
I’ve never had much use for Eastern Michigan University outside two EMU deans who hired me to edit Michigan Runner magazine for 15 years.
So when National Geographic magazine apprized me last week that the Land Down Under Nov. 2, 1932 launched a war to dispose of 20,000+ emus, I kept reading.
Seems three Royal Australian Artillery soldiers showed up with machine guns aiming to wipe out ostrich-like bird emus, said the magazine — not Ypsilantians who changed their school’s nickname from “Hurons” to “Eagles” to keep Native Americans from getting restless. Now Huron tribe members could aim verbal arrows at the Great Lake, which still goes by that name, instead.
The soldiers’ effort, National Geographic went on, descended quickly into chaos. In the first three days they killed only 30 emus. Instead of staying in herds the birds scattered on hearing gunfire, making them tougher targets.
Truck drivers trying to herd the birds into firing range reported the emus could sprint 55 mph across the uneven outback. Some formed “units” with lookouts to evade capture. Bullets from glancing shots just bounced off them.
“Emus,” lamented lead officer Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith, “face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks.”
By Dec. 18 the Royals had killed only 2,500 emus, a fraction of the birds’ population. Veteran farmers were no better off than they were after World War I.
With public sympathy growing for the native species alongside ridicule for the soldiers, the government called off the operation. Poor Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith. The emus won.
In the 1990s I wrote a story about a Shelbyville farmer raising emus hoping to get rich by selling their giant eggs. His plans didn’t work out either, but I did get to meet enough of his big, nasty birds to know they should not be messed with.
“The Emu War,” editorialized N.G., “wasn’t just a testament to military folly, it underscored the birds’ incredible resilience.
“Standing nearly six feet tall, with strides over three feet long, emus are part of the ratites, a flightless group of birds descended from dinosaurs,” it continued.
Dinos and dodos went extinct alongside the Flintstones, but humans still think wars against other living beings are winnable.
Here we are more humane. Committee members would rather cull, not kill, what they call our deer overpopulation. In other words, “Harvest,” don’t “hunt” these native beasts we’ve displaced. It’s for their own good, you see.
I have issues with other wildlife this time of year. Take “The 12 Days of Christmas,” a song about giving our true love the bird — lots of birds, in fact.
On Day One, then for the next 11 straight, you give him or her a partridge in a pear tree. Wouldn’t it be more cost-efficient to buy and give all at once?
It keeps on like this — birds, birds, birds through seven swans a-swimming — for the first week, except on Day Five when the golden rings start. Know what all that will do to your shopping budget?
Next, where does your true love put all those birds plus pear trees, water for the swans to swim in, food, cages, newly-laid eggs …? He or she may not be your true love long.
Plus. who cleans up the mess? After 12 days, your victimized beneficiary will have 12 partridges in pear trees, 22 turtle doves, 30 French hens, 36 calling birds, 40 golden rings, 42 geese a-laying, 42 swans a-swimming, 40 maids a-milking (cows included?), 36 ladies dancing, 30 lords a-leaping, 22 pipers piping and 12 drummers drumming.
That’s 364 items total, plus a bill for them estimated by economists last year as more than $200,000. Tack on inflation too. Does it never end?
The 12 Days start after Christmas and run through Jan.6, the Epiphany. May we all get along better with fellow beasts by then.
