Cold Open:

The Great Emu [ ee-myoo ] War!

Not EE-MOOOO War - Eee MYOO 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 hit few Australians harder than many of those veteran farmers.

They now struggled to sell their wheat.

AND THEN - to make things EVEN WORSE - Emus [ ee-myoo ] 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 Emus [ ee-myoos ]. And yes, a mob is the “technical” term for a group of Emus [ ee-myoo ].

These large flightless, strange-looking bumbling dinosaur birds tore through fences, ate crops, and sometimes, even attacked farmers - especially if they spotted a shiny object on them, like a coin or belt buckle.

Australia’s national bird became a national pest.

The “Emu [ ee-myoo ] infestation” got so bad that these desperate farmers reached out to the Australian government for help. In their quest for solutions, they skipped over the Agricultural or Ecology folks and even the Animal Management folks and went straight…… to the Ministry of WAR.

The government would soon send three soldiers, armed with two machine guns and a film crew.

Probably should’ve sent in a lot more troops and a lot more guns.

A war was waged. Man versus beast. A pretty one-sided war since the beasts didn’t have guns - but a war nonetheless.

And it appears as if the Emus [ ee-myoo ] ………may have won?

How is that possible!?!

We return to the land down under today to suck Australia’s Great Emu [ ee-myoo ] War — - on this bird-brained, machine gun, invasive creature edition…. of Timesuck.

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO

I. Welcome!

I.A.Happy Monday:

Happy Monday, everyone!

Hail Nimrod, Hail Lucifina, Praise Bojangles, and glory be to Triple M.

I’m Dan Cummins, the Suck Master - just one nickname today - and you are listening to Timesuck.

B.Charity: Quick reminder that the Bad Magic Productions charity of the month was No Kid Hungry dot org.

Thanks to the Space Lizards who helped us donate $12,200.

To find out more, or to donate more than you have already, go to https://www.nokidhungry.org/

Link in the episode description.

C.Merch: Got another Hell Yearbook tee in the store at badmagicmerch.com

The Truck Stop Killer. Robert Ben Rhoades. Voted most likely to forget the safe word.

(SAW VOICE) “You cannot attain sexual ascension without it, slave! Incubus commands you to wear it over some nipple rings connected to a car battery.”

D.Additional Announcements: Also - a great comic and friend of mine, the fantastic Kelsey Cook has a new standup special coming out!

Kelsey Cook’s Epix special airs on Friday Feb. 26th.

It’ll air Friday night, Feb. 26th at either midnight or 12:30am ET. It's a 30 min special that's part of Epix's series called "Unprotected Sets, and it can fluctuate each week so they don't know for sure until the week of.

Hope you get lots of new laughs with Kelsey Cook and her new Epix Unprotected Sets special !

E.Segue to Topic: And now onto the Great Emu [ ee-myoo ] War.

Some people call it the Great Emu [ ee-myoo ] War because there were a couple distinct phases of it, with a first assignment and a second after they had reevaluated the methods of the first. In a way, the Emu [ ee-myoo ] War/War would continue through the 50s with farmers continually asking for assistance, though they didn’t get much.

In the end it would be the advent of better and cheaper fences that would finally put an end to the biggest hostilities between humans and Emu [ ee-myoo ].

Today’s suck is fucking ridiculous on so many levels, but perhaps it’s the right kind of palette cleanser after last week’s trip through Dante’s nightmarish vision of the Christian hell, which of course came after an actual hell on Earth in the Armenian Genocide the week before.

Let’s get into it.

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTERLUDE

II. Intro/Establish Premiss:

Australia.

The Land Down Under as popularized by Men at Work. THANK you Colin Hay.

Great Aussie band! If you haven’t Colin’s acoustic version of Overkill, are you even alive?

The Land Down Under is where we will be spending the majority of our time today covering this delightfully odd little slice of history.

And, although I haven’t been, I’ve heard from many it’s a very good land.

In the 2020 US News and World Report Countries with the Highest Quality of Life rankings, Australia placed 5th out of the 73 nations ranked.

The Quality of Life sub-ranking is based on an equally weighted average of scores from nine country attributes that relate to quality of life in a country: affordable, a good job market, economically stable, family friendly, income equality, how many people are down to fuck, how politically stable is it, how safe, how well-developed is the public education system, how much ice cream is both tasty and affordable, and how well-developed is the public health system?

I may have added the down to fuck part and the ice cream - but they SHOULD be included. More ice cream and more sex certainly leads to more happiness, doesn’t it?

Hail Lucifina!

The Quality of Life sub-ranking score had a 17% weight in the overall Best Countries ranking, where Australia also took 5th place.

My neighbor to the North, sweet Canada, took #1 in quality in life. The other top five were Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Switzerland was ranked the best overall nation. The USA? 15th in quality of life. 7th best nation overall.

I say all this to point out that Australia is one of the most successful nations in the world. Wealthy, healthy, modern and one of the most desirable places on earth to put down some meat-sack-roots….

… which is all-the-more impressive when you take into account how the majority of the country slash continent is a barren, unforgiving, snake-filled nightmare.

The COASTS…. the coast are INCREDIBLE.

But the giant majority of the land in the middle?

Nope. Fuuuuuuuuuuck that.

Not for me.

Not for many, actually.

The Outback. Seems to be a crazy place.

It’s as massive as it is horrible for human habitation. And it covers more than 70% of the continent slash country.

And less than 5% of Australia’s population lives there.

And almost all of them live in the Outback’s coastal areas. Over 1.8 million square miles of the Outback are desert and very, VERY few people live there.

Temperatures in the Outback’s deserts can reach over 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

It’s a wild land - one of the least inhabited places on Earth - full of extreme weather and extreme wildlife. Plenty of bugs and critters - critters like Emus [ ee-myoos ]

The Great Emu [ ee-myoo ] War took place on the edge of this desert. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2014/10/ the-modern-outback

Really looking forward to exploring these strange “war” today - such a a unique piece of history.

And looking forward to exploring a strange and fascinating continent as well.

Australia has always seemed especially magical to me. I really, really hope I make it there for a vacation…. or for shows - who knows? - in the next few years.

Australia’s biggest city is Sydney, followed by Melbourne and Brisbane [briz bun] . Since over 85 percent of the population live in cities, Australia is among the countries with the highest degree of urbanization.

Australia, however, is known here in the states for its outdoors. It has the reputation of being unsettled - being home to a massive numbers of species of every kind of animal out there that can and will fuck you up. A land full of plenty of bugs, snakes, crocodiles, and other beasts that can and will kill you.

But is it really that dangerous?

Maybe not as dangerous as it’s been portrayed in a lot of films and tv shows.

Much of the continent IS pretty rugged though.

The small portion of Australians actually living in or near the Outback - away from urban areas - the overwhelming majority of the nation’s geography - face unique challenges due to their geographic isolation, and they often have poorer health and welfare outcomes than their urban counterparts.

While it seems most people picture the entire Outback being arid and desert-like, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and actually encompass various types of biomes, including tropical and monsoonal climates in northern areas, arid areas and semi-arid areas.

And people who live in the Outback - desert and non-desert - DO continually deal with wildlife - including feral-but-usually domesticated animals like camels that thrive in central Australia, like wild horses known as ‘brumbies,’ feral pigs, foxes, cats - SO MANY FUCKING CATS - goats, rabbits, and more.

And many of these animals - like emus [ee myus] - have left destructive marks on the environment, and a lot of time and money has been spent eradicating or “culling” them in an attempt to help protect the Outback’s fragile rangelands.

More on the ethics of animal culling in just a bit. https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/0c0bc98b-5e4d-4826-af7f- b300731fb447/aihw-aus-221- chapter-5-2.pdf.aspx#:~:text=Around%207%20million%20people%E2 %80%94about,people%20living%20in%20major%20cities.

As part of our journey today - since our topic revolves around an animal causing a lot of problems for humans, and since Australia seems to have a reputation for having lots of animals that cause problems - we’re also going to investigate just how many things in the Australian outback CAN actually kill you and how it compares to the other reportedly dangerous places on earth.

Today, we’ll also look at some other ecological mistakes made by the settlers and/or colonizers that changed the outback forever.

MOSTLY today though, we’ll be talking about the Great Emu [ ee-myoo ] War.

What could these big birds possibly have done to warrant the military getting involved and literally bringing in machine guns to massacre them? [ ee-myoos ]?

Man vs Emu? Seriously?

Yep.

Some Aussies - sanctioned by their government - went after the bird that is on their national crest. Their NATIONAL BIRD!

Can you imagine America waging a war on the Bald Eagle? That’s basically what happened in Australia.

I’d kill some bald eagles if the situation was right.

If the Eagle decided to try and eat a bunch of our needed produce - I could see turning on Eagles.

I’d be all for it.

(Angry patriot) “Those bald, greedy bastards crossed a line when they descended on Florida and ate up all of our oranges! How the FUCK are we supposed to enjoy mimosas now? Sure mango mimosas are also delicious but you can’t beat the classic!

And what about hot cider on a cold winter’s day? GONE! Gone thanks to those Goddamn Eagles descending on Washington and taking all the apples.

And good luck finding a french fry! Been WEEKS since I sniffed a fry. Fucking majestic freedom-and-produce-loving vultures went buck wild on all of Idaho’s potatoes.”

If Bald Eagles took away my mashed potatoes I’d turn into a bald- Eagle blasting son-of-a-bitch REAL quick.

Australia went after Emus [ ee-myoos ] because Emus [ ee-myoos ] went after Australia’s wheat.

In the wake of WW1, hordes of emus [ ee-myoos ] who were decimating newly founded farms on the age of the Outback in Western Australia.

Australia’s economy was tanking in the years leading up to the Great Depression - a Depression that hit Australia particularly hard - and they NEEDED THAT WHEAT, damn it!

So Australia’s government decided to try and save Australia’s wheat farmers by calling for a national culling of their national bird. https://www.historynet.com/weapons-of-world-war-i.htm

Instead of their fellow man, the Australian farmers’ enemy was a bird with a brain smaller than these mens’ fists.

But these birds wouldn’t be beaten so easily. In fact, they’d pretty much win in the end.

Some Australians, including politicians, even joked that the Emus [ ee- myoos ] deserved medals.

To be fair - the Aussies went hard on the emus but they could’ve went harder.

Aussie farmers didn’t roll out a bunch of tanks or fighter planes or get to use missiles or sarin [saa · ruhn] gas on their avian enemies.

They ASKED for some of that - but they didn’t get it.

But the Australian army DID fix a machine gun to a truck in an effort to run these two-legged devil-birds down.

And humans still lost that round where they had a truck with a mounted machine gun.

They lost all of the rounds, really.

Before we dig into some round-by-round coverage, first, let’s get a better feel for this big commonwealth country. under.

III. Australia:

A. The Battleground - Western Australia:

Australia is an island continent - the only nation to take up an entire continent, actually - and it’s the world's sixth largest country - over 7.6 million square kilometers slash over 4.7 million square miles.

Lying between the Indian and Pacific oceans, the country is approximately 4,000km/2485 miles from east to west and 3,200 km/ 1988 miles from north to south, with a coastline 36,735 km/22,826 miles long.

Population-wise, it’s no where near the top ten. 55th most populous nation. Just over 25 million people call it home.

So sparsely populated. It’s over 25 times as big as Italy, for example, with less than half the population.

Australia made up of six states - Western Australia - where today’s action will take place is the biggest state by far, 32.9% of the nation’s total size. Its 4th out of six when it comes to population with just under 2.4 million people. An especially sparsely populated area of an especially sparsely populated land.

Almost all of the people in Western Australia live in the Perth metro area - just over two million people. A couple hundred thousand scattered the rest of that giant area of land.

The second biggest state is Queensland, followed by South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania.

And then there is the Northern Territory, a giant chunk of Australia bigger than all but two of the states. Why isn’t it a state? Well, it’s a long story that takes us too far away from today’s topic. A long going battle regarding how much control the federal government should have over the especially rugged Northern Territory.

And finally, on mainland Australia, there is also the little Australian Capital Territory. Think Washington DC if DC included a few extra towns and a big ass national park lay just outside of it.

It’s a capital federal capital area. https://profile.id.com.au/perth/about?WebID=230 https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-largest-states-and- territories-of-australia.html https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/national-location-information/ dimensions/area-of-australia-states-and-territories https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-27/why-isnt-the-northern- territory-a-state-curious-darwin/9457776

Canberra [can burra] is Australia's capital city.

It’s the only city in the world where the men aren’t legally allowed to wear shirts but ARE legally required to wear shark tooth necklaces, where crocodiles can and do vote, where all the women skateboard and only wear bikinis, and where you have to be a koala bear to drive a city bus.

And of course that’s crazy - but it paints an interesting picture I enjoy thinking about. Why did my mind pick all those details?

Back to reality.

With a population of approximately 380,000 people and situated in the Australian Capital Territory, Canberra [can burra] is roughly half way between Australia’s two largest cities Melbourne [mel burn] and Sydney.

Weather-wise - the majority of Australia experiences temperate weather for most of the year. You could do a lot worse.

The northern states of Australia are typically warm all the time, with the southern states experiencing cool winters but rarely sub-zero temperatures. Surf in the summer, drive a bit and snowboard in the winter.

Snow falls on the higher mountains during the winter months, enabling skiing in southern New South Wales and Victorian ski resorts, as well as smaller resorts in Australia's island state, Tasmania.

Tasmania looks awesome. Not that the rest of the country doesn’t.

Australia's first inhabitants, the Aboriginal people, are believed to have migrated from some unknown point in Asia to Australia between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago.

While British explorer Captain James Cook is often credited with Australia's European discovery in 1770 - and he DID first explore the Eastern seaboard and 1778 is when the British first colonized the continent - neither he nor the British FIRST discovered Australia for Europe.

A Portuguese ship possibly first sighted the country - actually the Spanish, Chinese, Arabs and even the Romans have claimed to have spotted Australia in their histories - but there is little credible documented evidence for these nations.

The Dutch though, we know the began exploring the coastal regions beginning in 1606. https://www.nla.gov.au/faq/who-was-the-first-european-to-land-on- australia

Why didn’t they colonize it?

The landed in the wrong places.

The saw the western coast - not far from where our story takes place - and they were like, “Fuuuuuuuuuuuck that. We can’t live in that big ass land of desert, bush, and strange vermin. Not even WINDMILLS can turn that land into something useful! How are we supposed to grow tulips there!?!”

They may not have been exactly like THAT, but, they did assume the land was mostly uninhabitable.

They saw no benefit in settling it.

Then the British saw some land over on the East side of the continent, and they were like, “Yeah. Yeah this will do. Maybe. Let’s send some prisoners over first, see how they do. If they can’t make it work, no big whoop, as the King likes to say. If they CAN??? - BINGO BANGO - new colony time! Fuck yeah. Noice.”

They said SOMETHING like that.

Australia became a nation on January 1st, 1901, when the British Parliament passed legislation enabling the six Australian colonies - New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania - to collectively govern in their own right as the Commonwealth of Australia.

Australia follows a Westminster system of government and law inherited from the British who originally colonized the country. It's technically a constitutional monarchy, just like the UK.

There are two main political parties - the Australian Labor Party, Australia’s liberals. And the Liberal Party, ironically, is what we here in America consider to be conservative.

Very confusing.

The Liberal Party tends to promote economic liberalism - which in the Australian usage refers to free markets and small government.

The Australian Labor Party, has has been described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists.

There are also a number of minor parties - and they all make up the Commonwealth Parliament.

Each state and territory also has its own government.

The coat of arms of Australia, officially called the Commonwealth Coat of Arms, is the formal symbol of the Commonwealth of Australia.

And it is has an emu [ee-myoo] on it.

The first arms were authorized by British King Edward VII on May 7th, 1908, and the current version by King George V on September 19th, 1912.

And if Australia declared independence from Britain before that - WHY are British Kings authorizing anything Australian?

Because Australia, kind of but not really still likes to kiss the ring.

KIND OF. Easy Aussies. Your nation likes to have royalty, just not royalty you have to take seriously.

It’s so fucking weird for us here in America.

Australia’s relationship with the British crown is unique.

As part of the commonwealth, when the King or Queen visits Australia, he/she speaks and acts King or Queen of Australia, not as King or Queen of the UK.

I imagine the Queen turning her crown around when she flies over Australian soil - like Sylvester Stallone turning his trucker hat around in Over the Top. She shifts into Aussie mode, sets her scepter down, grabs a big ass fucking knife.

As the constitutional monarch, The British Crown, is not actually involved in the day-to-day business of the Australian Government, but the monarch continues to play important ceremonial and symbolic roles.

I took an entire class on the Britain’s government back in college when I spent a semester in London, and I got an A, and I still left not REALLY understanding why the British crown still exists, and why the British commonwealth still exists.

I asked numerous Londoners, and got a lot answers centered around “tradition.” As we species, we tend to like rituals, traditions, and routines.

AND - a lot of little girls, thanks to so many fairy tales, LOVE to dream of being princesses.

Is that part of it? I don’t know.

ALSO - the tradition of the crown helps bind the nations of the British Commonwealth.

And why is there still a Commonwealth?

The stated purpose of the voluntary Commonwealth is for international cooperation and to advance economics, social development, and human rights in member countries.

It’s a big club. It’s like the Freemasons for nations.

Do they need a king or queen for that? I don’t think so. But if it makes them feel good, if it gives news pundits and tabloids something to write about, whatever I guess.

From what I gather, if they got rid of some allegiance to the crown, most Australians don’t seem to think their day-to-day lives would change at all.

Maybe the US should have a powerless monarch?

What a fun job that would be. A crown without the stress of others really wanting to take it from you.

Who should it be?

How about…….. me! King Cummins the Magnificent!

I won’t get to weigh in on any important political decisions which is probably good - but I’ll get a cool palace to live in, and I’ll get to wear a crown in public ceremonies.

And if my wife Lynze gets to sassy, MAYBE I can have her beheaded? I’m not sure. Not saying I want to but it would a fun threat to throw out.

We’ll have to work out a lot of rules.

Hopefully I’ll get to yell at peasants and wenches while I gnaw on a big, greasy turkey leg. “Yes, yes! That’s most excellent (Nom, nom, nom) I concur! More wine! Yes, very well then (nom, nom, nom) Long live the king!

Oh - I’m not supposed to say that?

Others are? REALLY!?!

Well then say it then, DAMN YOU! Say “long live the king - or off with your heads! (disappointed) I don’t have that authority? Why am I speaking in a knock-off Shakespeare -summer-theater accent? (my voice) ‘Cause I’m trying to have fun with this you fucking dicks! Why did I even put on my crown today? I didn’t put on this heavy ass cape thing and get carried here by peasants to be disrespected!”

Sorry - we’ve gotten way off truck.

Back to that Australian coat of arms.

It shows a shield, depicting symbols of Australia's six states, being held up by the native Australian animals, the kangaroo and the Emu [ ee-myoo ].

The seven-pointed Commonwealth Star surmounting the crest also represents the states and territories, while floral emblems appear below the shield. https://info.australia.gov.au/about-australia/our-country

Couple more land down under facts before we narrow our focus and hone in on Western Australia facts

Australia boasts some of the world's most beautiful natural wonders such as the Great Barrier Reef - the world's largest coral reef system, the crazy looking GIANT sandstone formation Ayers Rock aka Uluru in south Northwest Territories, the fun to say Bungle Bungles rock formation in Western Australia, the Twelve Apostles giant limestone stacks off the coast of Victoria along the Great Ocean Road, and on and on and on.

Lot of cool geography.

Man-made icons include the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the iconic Sydney Opera House.

The longest river in Australia is the Murray River which is 2375 kilometers/ 1475 miles long.

The Murray River begins in New South Wales, then travels through Victoria and finally South Australia where the Murray Mouth meets the Southern Ocean aka the Antarctic Ocean.

The Murray River is home to a variety of wildlife such as platypus, Murray cod, golden perch, and trout.

The river is also famous for its paddle steamers and there are paddle steamers that cruise along the river for several days. https://www.australianexplorer.com/about-australia.htm

NOW - let’s check out the part of Western Australia where the Great Emu [ ee-myoo ] War occurred.

1. Western Australia: The actual location of the war was the Campion [like champion] District of Chandler, Western Australia.

So rural.

No disrespect if you live in this area, BUT - I would rather set my balls on fire than have to live there with you.

Now that I’ve said that out loud - it feels disrespectful.

It’s just too isolated for me.

This now mostly abandoned settlement - only about 100 people currently live there - is part of Australia’s Wheatbelt.

And it’s not close to anything other than other towns of no more than a few hundred people. It’s almost four hours away from Perth.

Out in the Wheatbelt.

The Wheatbelt is one of nine regions of Western Australia defined as administrative areas for the state's regional development.

It partially surrounds the Perth metropolitan area, extending north from Perth to the Midwest region and east to the massive nearly 300,000 square mile Goldfields-Esperance region.

Altogether, this wheat belt has an area of 154,862 square kilometers, or 59,793 square miles.

And today, an estimated 137,000 people live in it. Little over two people per square mile. 2.29.

That is VERY rural.

For comparison - I live in Idaho, one of the MOST rural states in the US, and our population per square mile is 19.8.

Alaska has the lowest population density of any US state by far - 1.3 people per square mile, because most of it is frozen for most of the year.

The Wheatbelt accounts for only approximately 3 percent of Western Australia's population.

It’s a lot of farms…. and not a whole lot else. If you hate other people but LOVE farming wheat - you should move there.

This region is divided into 42 local government administrative districts, and most of them don’t have 1,000 people in them. https://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/research-topics/ aboutmyregion/wa-wheat-belt

The area, once upon a time a diverse ecosystem, was cleared by settlers in the 1890s who removed native plant species like eucalyptus.

Now, it’s home to around 11% of Australia's critically endangered plants.

The eastern fringe of the wheat belt is very arid and mainly used for raising some sheeps! It’s for people who hate other people the most AND hate farming wheat BUT love fucking sheep.

Some government stats say that somewhere between 70 and 80% of the people who live in the Eastern wheat belt have engaged in some form of bestiality. Over 60% of the men, and over 90% of the women. Over 95% of senior women are reported to engage in bestiality there.

How weird would that be, if the largest group of sheep fuckers was elderly women. Nana likes her wool FRESH!

Not a lot of sheep fucking that I’m aware of.

In addition to sheeps raising - also some mining - mostly for gold, iron, and nickel.

The remainder of the region is more suited to agriculture, and is the source of nearly two thirds of the state's wheat production, half of its wool production, and the majority of its lamb and mutton, oranges, honey, and flowers— as well as a range of other agricultural and pastoral products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Wheatbelt_(Western_Australia)#Change

Previous to Australian colonization, there was, of course, no Wheatbelt at all.

Just raw land and local flora.

And then Meatsacks showed up and started engineering the land around shit they liked to eat.

Humans first showed up in Western Australia between 40,000 and 60,000 years ago when Indigenous Australians arrived on the northwest coast.

Took a lot longer for Europeans to make it.

The First Fleet arrived in Australia in 1788 carrying more than 700 convicts to start a new penal settlement at Sydney. Clear across the continent.

Additional convict ships arrived in 1790 and 1791.

Those early fleets also brought hundreds of free people to the colony, mostly soldiers and their families.

The first people to be considered free settlers—that is, people who made their own decision to migrate to the colony—arrived aboard the Bellona in early 1793 along with 17 female prisoners from Britain.

Thomas Rose and his family, plus several others, settled on land that they called Liberty Plains, which is now in the suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales. Although free settlers continued to arrive in New South Wales in the years that followed, they were outnumbered by convicts for the first few decades.

Then, a few decades later, in December of 1826, an expedition commissioned by the New South Wales colonial government and led by Major Edmund Lockyer landed at King George Sound, which would lead to a settlement in Western Australia.

The early settlement became the city of Albany where about 35,000 now live.

On January 21st, 1827, Lockyer formally took possession of the western third of the continent of Australia for the British Crown.

I’m sure thousands and thousands of aboriginal people were not notified of this and went on living their lives in the Outback not giving a fuck who thought they were in charge for many decades.

How strange.

This was followed by the establishment of the Swan River Colony in 1829, including the site of Western Australia’s present-day capital, Perth.

Today, as I mentioned before, Perth is Australia's fourth-most populous city, with a population of 2.06 million.

The city bustles with new bars, restaurants, shopping and cultural spaces.

Did you known Tame Impala, Kevin Parker’s band, come out of Perth? One of the most popular and critically acclaimed alt/ indie bands in the last five years or so in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tame_Impala

Just a short drive away are the beautiful wineries of the Swan Valley and a string of stunning beaches where you can watch amazing sunsets and even swim with wild dolphins.

But back in the early 19th century, there was no tourism trade.

There was no cities anywhere around.

There was mostly just miles and miles of pretty unforgiving terrain.

Founded in 1829, Perth still only had three thousand thousand people in 1870. And it was the BIGGEST city in ALL of massive Western Australia.

Almost NO ONE lived in Western Australia until the 20th century outside of small Aboriginal villages of maybe a hundred or so people here, a couple hundred people there, etc.

The first free colonial settlers paid their own way to Australia, meaning that they were typically quite prosperous.

To encourage free settlement among the less wealthy, the British colonial government began to pay the transportation costs for many migrants in the early 1800s.

That’s when you know a place is SUPER COOL to live in. When the government has to pay people to move there. And they STILL have a hard time getting people to go.

In addition to paying moving costs, the government ALSO gave settlers free land on the condition that it be used for a productive purpose.

And this offer appealed to people who were suffering from unemployment and poverty in Britain as a result of the Industrial Revolution.

The government also provided these largely British settlers with free agricultural tools AND convict labor to help them establish their farms.

I picture all of this coming about through a series of negotiations.

“C’mon! Just move there!”

“No!”

“We’ll pay all of your moving costs.”

“No!”

“We’ll give you FREE LAND!”

“No!”

“C’mon! We’ll give you free farming equipment!”

“No!”

“We’ll give you some slave - I mean, convict - labor.”

“So slaves then?”

“Yes.”

“Okay then. I GUESS I’ll move there.”

Life was hard for most of Australia’s early settlers. Probably especially for the convict labor. By 1868, over 9,000 convicts had been transported to Western Australia on 43 convict ship voyages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Western_Australia

The colonists struggled to find fertile land, and the hot, dry climate made farming even more difficult.

The seasons were different from Britain’s, and most of the plants and animals were unfamiliar. Starvation was a constant concern during the colony’s first few years. All of the settlers - men, women, children, convicts - mostly convicts probably - had to contribute to keep the colony from failing.

The first challenges were to clear the often thickly wooded land and to build a fence around it. Then they did their best to grow crops in the unfamiliar environment, learning from their successes and failures.

The first settlers found an abundance of trees, but few were useful for building.

Over time the settlers found different kinds of trees that were strong and durable but easier to cut. With wood from those trees they built crude homes known as slab huts.

They split pieces of timber from logs, using some to make posts and leaving others as rough slabs. They used the posts to build a frame and the slabs to make walls. The roof was made of thatch, shingles split from trees, or sheets of bark. Bark roofs were modeled on those they saw on the shelters of Aboriginal peoples.

Even children worked hard. The children of most free settlers had to work hard alongside their mothers and fathers. Typical chores included fetching water from the well or river, washing the dishes, helping with the laundry, and gathering wood.

Children also did farm work, such as feeding the hens, gathering eggs, milking the cows, shearing sheep, and harvesting crops. Girls were expected to knit and sew, cook, clean, and make beds as well as look after younger siblings. Boys sometimes helped their fathers in construction work.

There were few schools in the early years of settlement, and most children did not attend.

Conditions improved as settlers expanded inland from the coast, opening up more fertile lands for farming as well as vast tracts for raising livestock.

The Swan River Colony was renamed Western Australia in 1832. The colony struggled, and by the 1840s the colonists were in need of additional workers to keep the settlement viable.

At their request the British government converted Western Australia to a convict colony in 1849.

The colonization of Australia happened at the expense of the continent’s Indigenous peoples, similar to how US expansion came at the expense of North American tribes.

At first, relations between the Aboriginal people and the European newcomers were generally friendly. Conflict soon developed, however, as the Europeans expanded their settlements into Aboriginal territory.

Aboriginal resistance to the invasion of their lands led to violent clashes. Ultimately, more than 20,000 Aboriginal people and almost 2,000 Europeans are estimated to have died in the conflicts.

Diseases carried by the colonists killed many more Aboriginal people.

In the 1830s and 1840s both the British public and the Australian colonists grew increasingly critical of transportation - the British practice of shipping convicts to Australia.

The British government ended transportation to eastern Australia in 1852. In Western Australia transportation continued until 1868. After that, all of Australia’s settlers were free…. nominally.

In the 1880s, gold was discovered in Western Australia.

Prospectors by the tens of thousands swarmed the land in a desperate attempt to discover new mines.

Western Australia gained the right of self-government in 1890, and joined with the five other states to form the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901.

The wealth generated from gold soon disappeared.

By the early 20th century, the region’s economy was once again dependent on wool and wheat.

Then, a global depression in the late 1920s and early 1930s left most nations with little to no ability to buy Western Australia’s wheat and wool - cue economic free fall.

THEN - on top of an economic crisis - there was a huge drought in the 1930s.

Cue near-economic collapse.

THEN - the fucking emus showed up to eat the wheat farmers already REALLY STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE were trying to grow -

Cue let’s get some damn machine guns and fuck these birds up. It’s them or us!

Let’s meet these Emus.

Right after we meet some of Australia’s other treacherous beasts.

B. Things That Can Kill You:

Is Australia REALLY a land full of dangerous animals that can kill you?

How true is that reputation?

Pretty true.

Kangaroos DO kill 1-2 Aussies a year… when someone hits them with a car.

Not a a great example.

But there are dangerous animals in and around Australia. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/31/tasmanian- sheep-farmer-dies-after-being-bitten-by-tiger-snake

The box jellyfish is hands down the most dangerous of all the creatures in Australia.

They’re not just one species but a whole class of super-venomous jellyfish that include species like the sea wasp.

What a horrible name for a creature. Sea wasps have been described as "the most lethal jellyfish in the world.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chironex_fleckeri

Not only are these jellyfish hard to see in the deceptively deadly waters during the warmer months, but they can also kill in as little as 2 minutes.

Box jellyfish have claimed over 64 lives in Australia since 1883. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chironex_fleckeri

In addition to box jellyfish, Australia’s waters are teeming with other highly venomous creatures.

Right at the top of that list is the stinging stonefish that makes its home hiding among the rocks and in the sand.

Bryan Fry, a venom researcher at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, paints quite the picture of the horror this creature can unleash, saying the stonefish “produces such mind-blowing agony that the body goes into shock and the person dies.”

Did you just hear death from pain? That’s what I heard.

The PAIN from the sting can be fucking lethal.

Some sea snakes aka coral reef snakes, are among the most venomous snakes in the world, and they slink around in Australian coastal waters.

About 3,000 people are bitten by snakes in Australia each year, resulting in an average of two deaths and 550 hospitalizations.

There are snails that can kill you. Cone snails, which are highly venomous marine snails, slide across the seafloor.

The smallest cone snails impart a sting that is about as powerful as a bee sting, but the sting of larger species can kill an adult human in a matter of hours.

HAVE these snails killed any Australians though? Maybe not. So, scary possibility, but not a big danger.

What about saltwater crocodiles, the largest reptiles in the world?

They get about one Aussie a year.

What about bull sharks, sharks that are responsible for more shark attacks than any other shark species? Some of them make their home in Australia’s coastal waters too.

They kill only a few Australians a year, on average. 98 total shark attack deaths in Australia between 1988 and 2018.

Really not that bad.

Unless you’re one of those 98 people. Then, you know, pretty fucking bad for you. Pretty terrifying way to go out, I imagine.

What about land predators?

Let’s get up in that bush.

You get it.

The bush is home to a host of venomous critters. Snakes are by far the most threatening. There are about 170 species of land snakes in the land down under.

For comparison, the US has about 50 different species. Wisconsin, randomly, is home to 21 of them.

Did not picture the land of the cheese heads to be such a snake pit.

The coastal taipan is one of Australia’s particularly horrifying snakey inhabitants.

The coastal taipan is the third most venomous snake in the world. It rivals only Africa’s black mamba in ferocity, and when surprised or cornered, the costal taipan strikes repeatedly, delivering high doses of venom.

There’s also the Eastern Brown snake, the Western Brown snake, and the Mainland Tiger snake— all fast-moving, aggressive motherfuckers known for their bad tempers.

Bites from all of these snakes can be fatal if untreated, causing pain in the feet and neck, tingling, numbness and sweating, followed by breathing difficulties and eventually paralysis and kidney failure.

And there are so many more terrifying snakes— like the Common Death Adder.

Unlike other snakes that flee from approaching humans crashing through the undergrowth, Death Adders are more likely to sit tight and risk being stepped on.

About half of death adder bites proved to be fatal before the introduction of anti-venom.

BUT - deaths from all these snakes are actually very rare.

At least in modern times.

Since the development of many anti-venoms, fatalities in Australia from snake bites have been low – between 4 to 6 deaths a year. https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science- environment/2012/07/australias-10-most-dangerous-snakes/

So - with all these creatures - how dangerous is the Austrian outdoors compared to other parts of the world.

In one pretty arbitrary rating system we found, Australia - specifically the tropical Northern Australia region - was ranked as only the 5th most dangerous place on earth, while other surveys and articles had it even lower.

But how could that be? They have the great whites, and the snakes, and the crocodiles!

Well, for starters, many of these creatures aren’t found in populated areas. Unless you’re deliberately seeking them out, you are very unlikely to see any dangerous animals in Australia, let alone come into contact with them.

There have also been so many developments in antidotes for various venoms that fatalities are much rarer than they used to be.

Australia knows that there are a lot of dangerous species around, so they take precautions to ensure that everyone - especially un- informed tourists - remains safe.

Essentially, most beaches you visit will have lifeguards present who will announce when it is unsafe to go in the water, as well as ‘shark helicopters’ that monitor popular beaches for marine-life activity.

Lifeguards are also on the hunt for dangerous jellyfish floating in the water, and will ensure everyone gets the Hell out of the water if they spot those sea wasp devils.

On average only around 3 people in TOTAL die each year from wild animal related incidents in Australia compared with about:

- 5 people who die in Britain in cow related incidents each year;

- 8 people who die in Australia in horse related accidents each year;

- 13 people who die global each year in vending machine related incidents;

- 58 people who die in Australia from falling out of bed every year;

- 285 people who drown in Australia each year;

- 715 people who die from slipping, tripping or tumbling in Australia per year;

- 1,500 people who die in Australia per year in road accidents. https://backpackeradvice.com/destinations/oceania/australia/ dangerous-animals-australia.html

And if Australia is fifth on the list of most dangerous places for wildlife on earth, who are the others in the top four? I was surprised to see that the arctic wasn’t on the list.

Number four is the US and Canada.

I didn’t see that coming. Did you?

The US and Canada do have all sorts of bears, big cats, venomous snakes, alligators, wolves, and maybe Wendigos.

Plus— we have tons of venomous bugs from spiders to scorpions.

Number three on this random list is the Amazon. With piranhas and anacondas prowling the Amazon River and wandering spiders and jaguars prowling the Amazon rainforest, the Amazon is not a place where you’d want to get lost.

Number two is India. Between the tigers, bears, elephants, cobras, and crocodiles, India is highly populated with deadly creatures.

Combine that with the high overall population and the high population density of their major cities, you can have a major problem. It’s estimated that tigers have attacked and killed, at least, 373,000 people - mostly in Southern Asia - between 1800 and 2009.

Haha. that is SO MANY.

Tigers still nabbing villagers over there. They got 95 people just in 2019. https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/ in-2019-95-tiger-deaths-in-india-22-incidents-of-poaching-says- moefcc/ article30462278.ece#:~:text=Both%20put%20together%2C%20the %20number,101%20mortalities%20and%2021%20seizures).

The MOST dangerous part of the world? Sub-Saharan Africa.

With big cats, crocodiles, hippos, venomous snakes, and horrendous diseases, Africa is definitely the most dangerous continent on Earth.

Hippopotamuses are probably the most dangerous animal in Africa.

Not even lions or crocodiles can rival their death tolls. In one recent and horrifying incident, a hippo capsized a boat full of school children in the Niger River and killed 13 out of roughly 18 people aboard.

They kill about 500 people a year. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-20/hippopotamus-attack- kills-13-in-boat-in-niger/5904646 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-36320744 https://roaring.earth/the-5-most-dangerous-places-on-earth/5/ https://www.businessinsider.com/5-places-to-see-worlds-deadliest- animals-2019-1

In comparison with other countries, maybe Australia’s wild animals aren’t ALL that dangerous.

Sure, sometimes they kill, but just a handful of people a year.

Meanwhile, over 35,000 people die in traffic fatalities each year in the US alone.

And about 1200 Aussies are killed each year in traffic fatalities.

So - you’re a lot likelier to die driving into the Outback than you are getting out of your car or truck and hiking around. More likely to die getting on the freeway to head to the beach than you are to get attacked by a bull shark, or croc, or sea wasp. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state-by-state https://www.budgetdirect.com.au/car-insurance/research/car- accident-statistics.html

Now let’s stop talking about the rest of the animal kingdom killing humans and start talking about humans killing the rest of the animal kingdom since that what the Great Emu War is really all about.

Humans are, BY FAR, the most lethal predators on the planet.

It is estimated that each year - this is such an INSANE number - 77 BILLION land animals are killed by humans.

And what about water creatures?

It’s estimated - get ready for some crazier numbers - that been one and three TRILLION fish are caught every year globally. And that doesn’t include billions and billions of fish that are farmed and harvested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_slaughter https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpellmanrowland/2017/07/24/ seafood-sustainability-facts/?sh=3285c574bbfe

Most of those 77 billion land animals are raised to be slaughtered for food. Next to that, hunting is the most common way non-human surface creatures are killed.

And culling is lumped into the hunting portion. It’s a king of hunting that doesn’t necessarily involve any interest in eating the animal. And culling lays at the heart of the Great Emu War.

IV. Culling: Culling is the reduction of a wild animal population by selective slaughter. And while it may sound terrible to some of our modern ears, it still happens, and it’s been happening for a long, long time.

And the ethics of culling are debatable.

Some people - many people - think it is more ethical to kill a certain portion of an animal population so the population doesn’t have to compete with one another to access food and other resources.

When done correctly, instead of a large population suffering, culling allows a smaller population to live better.

I’m pro-culling.

PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, NOT pro-culling.

No surprise there.

They say, on their website, that “Starvation and disease are unfortunate, but they are nature’s way of ensuring that the strong survive. Natural predators help keep prey species strong by killing the only ones they can catch—the sick and weak. And who cares about the weak, right? Fuck ‘em. We here at PETA ONLY care about the strong. We save strong animal lives. Weak animals? Snap those skinny necks and toss ‘em in the toilet.”

PETA said MOST of that on their website. Not the last part about hating the weak and throwing them in the toilet.

PETA asks people on their site to go vegan to save 200 animals a year.

PETA posts videos of hunters on their site with headlines like “Man repeatedly shoots trapped, writing coyote in the Head.”

And oftentimes I think, how does PETA, an organization devoted to animals…. not know how fucking nature works?

Ever watched one of those old Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom nature documentaries?

Or any nature documentary?

The “NATURAL” cycle of life is EASILY just as brutal as human hunting, if not more so.

I just watched a video while doing this research filmed in South Africa’s Kruger Park, where a Cheetah takes down an Impala.

And it takes about four minutes for this poor Impala to die. It’s a real, REAL rough four minutes.

For about two of the minutes, the Cheetah is literally eating the Impala’s ass.

Like, all of it.

To the point that the poor creatures hind legs no longer seem to be attached.

Or maybe just attached by a a few scraps of hide.

And it’s STILL ALIVE.

Its head is moving around, it’s front legs are kicking, and the Cheetah just casually keeps gnawing on its hindquarters like it’s having a nice meal out at a fine-dining establishment with some friends. Pretty casual. Take a bite, long around a bit while chewing it. Enjoying that meat.

If that Impala could talk, I really doubt it would say,

“THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN BEING SHOT BY A HUMAN!!

THANK YOU CHEETAH! THANK YOU FOR EATING MY ASS INSTEAD OF SNAPPING MY NECK! OH THE JOY!

I’M SO GLAD I AM DYING IN A WAY PETA WOULD APPROVE OF! YAY CIRCLE OF LIFE! Hakuna matata!”

And what about when a species fucks it way over and above how much food is available to that species inside its given habitat?

When some deer is slowly wasting away from starvation, if it could talk, do you think it would say, (weak) “So… glad… I get… to die… a natural death. Painfully wasting away - SO much better than a bullet! THANK YOU nature.”

C’mon. Get out of here.

If you’re talking about an ethical death - I don’t think you can rationally argue that being mauled to death by a predator or starving is a MORE ethical than dying from a bullet. I would argue that the bullet is often the least cruel way the animal could die outside of dying of old age.

But, in my opinion, hunting just makes some people’s hearts hurt and they can’t get seem to get past the emotional outrage of seeing a bad naughty boy or naughty girl with a gun shooting a poor, defenseless animal.

Between 1967 and 1995 - elephants were culled every year in that same South African wildlife park where I watched the Cheetah fuck up that Impala.

Are you outraged?

Animal rights activist around the world were.

You know who weren’t outraged? Game management specialists who actually work at the park.

Why not?

Because they knew that if they didn’t control the elephant population, numerous other species in the park would literally go extinct because giant elephants EAT SO MUCH SHIT. They eat up to three hundred pounds of roots, grasses, fruit, leaves and bark a day. And trample pounds and pounds of other plants.

And they were eating the fuck out of plants that other animals also needed to survive.

But then too many people got sad, and the elephants stopped being culled.

And now elephants continue to reduce precious tree cover by eating and destroying more trees than ever and now other species that need that tree cover, like the black rhinoceros, a critically endangered species - become even more endangered.

God forbid someone shoot Dumbo to save other creatures that aren’t as equally represented in the toy aisle. https://www.peta.org/about-peta/faq/without-hunting-deer-and-other- animals-would-overpopulate-and-die-of-starvation/ https://www.peta.org/category/main-issues/wildlife/culling/page/2/ https://www.peta.org/category/main-issues/wildlife/culling/ http://southafrica.co.za/elephant-problems-kruger-national-park.html

A form of culling occurs here in the US every year.

It’s done through the distribution of hunting and fishing licenses. In the United States, hunting licenses and hunting seasons are a means by which the population of game animals is maintained.

Each season, a hunter is allowed to kill a certain amount of wild animals, determined both by species and gender. If the population seems to have surplus females, hunters are allowed to take more females during that hunting season. If the population is below what is desired, hunters may not be permitted to hunt that particular species, or only hunt a restricted number of males.

And in Australia, there has been a lot of culling done over the years, both of animals that were residents before Europeans showed up— like the Emu [ ee-myoo ] and the kangaroo— and of some of the animals the Europeans brought that ended up being way too good at making more of themselves.

In modern times, licenses are required and steps are taken to make the process as humane.

This is the case with millions of kangaroo killings each year.

That’s right - MILLIONS of kangaroos are killed each year.

Why?

Because they are real good at fucking. Pretty good at boxing. Better at being cute. And better still at fucking themselves into overpopulation.

And they end up eating the feed Aussie ranchers would like to see go to their cattle and sheep. If they’re not culled, the sheep and cattle will start to starve. And then they’ll die.

And then ranchers will lose their livelihoods.

And then a lot of people who are disgusted by the killing of kangaroos will lose their burgers, steaks, casseroles, etc, and they’ll be sad.

That’s my favorite. When someone who’s not a vegetarian or a vegan complains about hunting. Especially while eating a meal with meat. The information coming out of their mouths and the food going into their mouths don’t match up too well.

AND, again, even if we ALL became vegan, animals are still going to die.

Some populations will fuck their way into numbers that endanger other populations. Or themselves and it will lead to mass starvation or disease outbreaks.

The only real ethical argument I see when it comes to game management - and ranching - is what quality of life do animals get BEFORE they’re killed and how painful is their killing compared to what would happen to them if they died in the wild.

Forcing an animal to live in a tiny cage and then giving it a cruel death? I get the argument in favor of animal rights there.

Or - in the case of the Great Emu War - what if culling the animals actually DOESN’T help their species - and IS more painful than the death they would suffer naturally, BUT - DOES save human lives? Or at least saves human livelihoods?

This is a trickier moral conundrum.

And it’s why the Great Emu War was controversial. Why, while a lot of people were in FAVOR of killing the Emus, a lot of people were against it as well.

https://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~krebs/ecological_rants/on-culling- overabundant-wildlife/

Now let’s learn about team Emu [ ee-myoo ], the targets of the culling.

Or, to use the war metaphor - THE ENEMY!

Just what are these insane things?

V. Emu [ ee-myoo ]s are Cool:

A. Emu [ ee-myoo ] Facts:

The Emu [ ee-myoo ]s are enormous flightless birds only native to Australia, though now they also find themselves living in a variety of zoos across the world.

Emu [ ee-myoo ]s can be as tall as 6’2” - 1.8 meters - and weigh up to 120 pounds or 54kg.

On average, they’re about five feet long from head to tail.

They have long legs and stout bodies and apparently make for some good (and healthy) eating.

We’ll get to that.

As big as these crazy looking birds are - they’re the second-largest bird on earth, not the first.

The largest measured by mass is the common ostrich which lives on the plains of Africa and Arabia.

THOSE fuckers can grow over nine feet tall— three feet taller than Emus [ ee-myoo ].

And I’ve eaten ostrich before and it is DELICIOUS. Does NOT taste like chicken. Tastes like steak. That threw me - that ostrich looks and tastes a lot more like beef than it does poultry.

An Ostrich filet is very similar to a filet mignon, but leaner.

Wish I was having it for dinner.

Clearly I’m hungry.

REFOCUSING!

The second-biggest bird Emu [ ee-myoo ] is also the second largest living dinosaur running around our planet today.

Yep. Dinosaur.

Scientists believe that prehistoric birds began roaming the Outback some 80 million years ago around the time Tyrannosaurus rex was stomping around.

The Cretaceous [ kri-tey-shuhs ] period was home to a lot of the dinos we know and love today - like velociraptors!

And velociraptors probably enjoyed Emu steak as much as I enjoy ostrich steak.

Pretty cool. The Emu is a prehistoric bird.

Both male and female Emu [ ee-myoo ]s are brownish in color. The bases of their feathers are white. They don’t have feathers on their heads and necks and their skin has a dark bluish/grayish tinge.

They generally live between 10 and 20 years in the wild and up to 35 in captivity.

And the Emus [ ee-myoo ] are flightless.

Their wings are pretty much totally useless and account for only 1/10th of the length of their bodies. With no need to fly, their wings are typically less than eight inches— about the size of the average human hand.

It looks ridiculous.

While their wings don’t work to well, their legs work real, REAL good. They can run like motherfuckers.

Their spooky-looking three-toed dinosaur feet can propel them to speeds of up to around 30 miles per hour, or 50km/h.

Google says their max speed is 31 mph.

To put that in context, the fastest runner in the world, Usain Bolt— an eight-time Olympic medalist and 14-time World Athletics Championship medalist— ran a 100 meter dash in 9.58 seconds in 2009.

Bolt reached a top speed of 44.64 kilometers per hour or 27.8 miles per hour during that sprint.

An emu would’ve whooped him. https://www.britannica.com/story/how-fast-is-the-worlds-fastest- human https://www.healthline.com/health/how-fast-can-a-human- run#speed-comparison

Emus [ ee-myoo ] are so fast in part, because they’re the only birds with calf muscles, which also allow them to jump a staggering seven- feet in the air.

If they had hands instead of shitty little wings, they’d win all the world’s slam dunk competitions ever year.

They can run. They can jump. AND - these dinosaurs can fight.

When Emus [ ee-myoo ] are cornered, they use their gnarly toes and five-inch talons to kick at their opponent.

Reports of Emu [ ee-myoo ] attacks resulting in a range of injuries in Australia and in wild-animal parks, Emu [ ee-myoo ] farms, and zoos across the world are not uncommon, with more than 100 occurring in 2009 alone.

Couldn’t find an article referencing an emu in Australia KILLING any people - but they have attacked and injured people for sure. https://www.britannica.com/list/6-of-the-worlds-most-dangerous- birds#:~:text=Emu [ ee- myoo ]s%20can%20dash%20away%20at,human%20fatalities%20ar e%20extremely%20rare.

Emus [ ee-myoo ] also really, REALLY like shiny shit, like buttons and belt buckles.

Don’t want to be attacked? Don’t wear a shiny belt buckle.

They’re also, like many wild animals, real good at fucking.

After mating, female emus lay somewhere between 5 and 15 dark green eggs that are each about 5 inches around.

And then she bails.

The male will then spend around 8 weeks incubating the eggs in a ground nest. During this period he doesn’t eat or drink ANYTHING.

Emu dads are the best dads.

Males often lose up to 1/3 of their body weight sitting on those damn eggs.

After this eight-week parenting nightmare, daddy’s job is to chase away anything that comes near his baby chicks - including other females and even the chicks’ own mother.

Emu moms are NOT to be trusted. ALL Emus have mommy issues.

The little baby Emu [ ee-myoo ]s are born with stripes and are just under 10 inches tall.

And Emu-Daddies stay with their chicks for up to two years.

And then they, probably think, “NOT doing that again. NOT worth it.” And then, maybe thirty seconds later, they start chasing their dicks around into another parenting nightmare.

I get it. As a dick owner, I have to say, they are pretty fun to chase around.

Hail Lucifina!

As adults, Emus [ ee-myoo ] usually hang out in small flocks - called mobs - and forage for food like fruit and insects. They’re also BIG fans of wheat.

There are three subspecies of Emu [ ee-myoo ] on earth, inhabiting northern, southeastern, and southwestern Australia.

A fourth subspecies, now extinct, once lived in Tasmania.

The wheat-eating Emus [ ee-myoo ] of 1932 who caused all the ruckus were just doing what Emus [ ee-myoo ] had evolved to do in arid Australia: migrate long distances for food and water.

And one year, they found a bunch of sweet new wheat to eat during their travels!

Humans had accidentally grown an oasis for them!

https://www.britannica.com/animal/Emu [ ee-myoo ] https://www.racinezoo.org/Emu [ ee-myoo ]-fact-sheet https://www.treehugger.com/Emu [ ee-myoo ]-facts-5075359

B. Emu [ ee-myoo ]s Used For Food and Clothes:

Now we’ve met the opposite team.

Couple more Emu fact, then were in the timeline.

One Emu [ ee-myoo ] egg can make an omelet big enough to feed four to six adults.

Yum!

There are actually a few parts of the bird that make it a valuable source of nutrition.

A decade or so ago, the Emu [ ee-myoo ] was even billed as America's next red meat.

Its flesh is a nutritionist's dream— a lean meat that’s low in cholesterol and high in iron and vitamin C.

Fans of eating Emu [ ee-myoo ] say that its meat tastes like filet mignon. Just like their ostrich cousins!

But American ranchers haven’t really focused on raising these tasty dino-birds because they just don’t have enough meat compared to, say, a cow.

One 80-100 pound bird only yields about 30 pounds of boneless meat, whereas a big fat cow can yield about 550 pounds of meat.

However - MAYBE more Americans will start raising emus because in addition to their meat, you can sell oil made from their fat.

Emu [ ee-myoo ] oil has been shown to relieve arthritis pain, muscle soreness and joint stiffness. It’s widely added to beauty skin products like face and body moisturizers as well as cosmetics. It's also used in shampoos and conditioners and has proven to be an effective anti- wrinkle cream.

The ingredient is often listed as "kalaya oil" — kalaya means "Emu [ ee-myoo ]" in an Aboriginal language.

One Emu [ ee-myoo ] has around 24 pounds of fat, which can be processed into 2 gallons of oil or 256 ounces.

And Emu [ ee-myoo ] oil can sell for as much as 20 dollars per ounce.

And then there are the eggs.

Emus can lay up to 50 eggs a year.

And Emu [ ee-myoo ] eggs are featured in some of Australia’s top restaurants.

The emerald-colored eggs are in high demand in Australia. They’re high in protein and the size of eight chicken eggs.

People say they taste a lot different than chicken eggs— richer, for one.

Alright! Now we know a thing or two about Emu [ ee-myoo ]s, how they live, how they move and even how they taste, let’s jump into this week’s Timesuck Timeline…

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…right after a quick sponsor break.

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Thank you for listening.

NOW - it’s The Great Emu War time

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PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE INTRO

VI.Timesuck Timeline

1. July 28, 1914: Backing up just a little bit to the beginning of World War I on July 28th, 1914. Australia would play an interesting role in this global conflict.

2. August 14, 1914:

Less than three weeks after the outbreak of war, Australia declared war on Germany on August 14th, 1914, following Britain’s declaration of war 10 days earlier.

In Australia, both Prime Minister Joseph Cook and Opposition Leader Andrew Fisher, who were in the midst of an election campaign, pledged full support for Britain.

The outbreak of war was greeted in Australia, as in many other places - though not the US initially -with great enthusiasm.

The Australian government got cracking on all sorts of measures that would encourage more Aussies to fight, like military pensions, benefits, and medical treatments, which they started to put into place before 1914’s close.

Over the ensuing years, these measures would be gradually improved to meet— as far as possible— the needs of the nation’s veterans and their dependents.

Little did they know, in doing this, they were also creating a path that would lead to another war - the Great Emu [ ee-myoo ] War.

https://www.awm.gov.au/wartime/article2

3. April 25, 1915: On April 25, 1915, troops of the first Australian Imperial Force landed at Gallipoli in modern-day Turkey as part of an Allied contingent.

This was the era and scene of one of our most recent sucks— the nightmarish hell on earth that was the Armenian Genocide.

For the vast majority of the 16,000 Australians and New Zealanders who landed on that first day, this was their first experience of combat.

By that FIRST evening, 2000 of them had been killed or wounded.

The Gallipoli campaign, despite the bravery of the Aussies fighting, would be a military failure.

And with injured troops coming home damn near immediately after starting to fight, the Australian government was quickly tasked with what to do with these returning soldiers.

https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/gallipoli- landing#:~:text=On%2025%20April%201915%20Australian,had% 20been%20killed%20or%20wounded.

Let’s fast-forward a few years…

4. November 11, 1918: On November 11th, 1918 - now veterans day here in the US - World War I ended.

Germany formally surrendered and all nations had agreed to stop fighting while the terms of peace were negotiated.

Australia’s losses from the war were heavy for a nation of that numbered just 4.9 million total meatsacks before the war.

The Australian armed forces has sent about 340,000 soldiers overseas, of whom roughly 331,000 served in the Australian Imperial Force or AIF.

Thats’s almost 7% of the total population.

From a population of fewer than five million, 416,809 men enlisted, of which around 62,000 were killed and 156,000 wounded, gassed, or taken prisoner. https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/atwar/first-world-war

Also - during the war, 16,000 Australians became poison gas casualties, of whom only 325 died.

And many of the thousands who survived would return to Australia plagued by respiratory problems for the remainder of their lives – ailments that could range from mild to chronic and incapacitating.

Disease also severely affected these soldiers’ lives.

Harsh living conditions and poor nutrition during the war made for weak populations where disease spread like wildfire.

All told, there were nearly 438,000 “non-battle casualties” among the AIF during the war. Of these, 5,363 died of disease, and about 1,000 were killed as a result of accidents.

With the war over, a couple hundred thousand survivors were sent home - and most of them had either been wounded, or suffered from disease, or both.

And some of them returned to Western Australia where the economy was just about to crash hard.

https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/atwar/first-world-war https://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/wwone_soldiers/casualties

5. 1920: 1920. When repatriation of the Australian Imperial Force was completed that year, 264,000 men and women had returned to Australia, of whom 151,000 were deemed “fit,” and 113,000 “unfit.”

Specialized hospital ships brought them home, where a medical care system took charge of their recoveries.

The general hospitals were located in the state capitals and most included psychiatric and other specialist wards. These were supplemented by smaller auxiliary hospitals, convalescent centers and sanatoriums, plus small workshops to manufacture artificial limbs and appliances.

In 1920, around 90,000 Australian veterans received war disability pensions.

https://www.awm.gov.au/wartime/article2

6. 1919-1923: To make life harder for the many wounded veterans, Australia experienced high inflation from 1919 to 1920, followed by a severe recession that lasted until 1923.

The Australian economy at that time was based primarily on agriculture production and returned soldiers were resettled on rural blocks - little potential farms on the fringes of the bush.

ALSO - more than 200,000 government-sponsored British immigrants arrived in the years following WW1, with many moving to country towns.

More competition for lands and jobs in a struggling economy.

7. September 1920: By September of 1920, the government had purchased 90,000 hectares for the veterans, but they still needed more.

They started to place the remaining soldiers in some pretty marginal areas of Perth in Western Australia.

Around 5,030 of the ex-soldiers were given plots of land with the idea that they would farm mainly wheat and raise sheep.

The land was barely useable, not least because flocks of Emu [ ee- myoo ] ran around terrorizing the land, ready to kill someone over anything shiny.

Considering how hard it is to build a successful farm with ideal circumstances, this obviously made things harder.

8. 1922: Funnily enough, Emus [ ee-myoo ] had been a protected native species up until 1922.

Then in 1922, everything changed. Emu [ ee-myoo ]s made such a nuisance of themselves on these new wheat farms - flattening crops, eating them down to a stub, knocking down fences - and they were officially reclassified as vermin.

9. 1923: In 1923, a bounty system was put in place to deal with the jurassic-vermin.

Bring in some dead Emu [ ee-myoo ] hides, get some cash. Rinse and repeat.

The program was… moderately successful.

Despite the bounty placed on emus heads, their population continued to grow.

Meanwhile, in the mid-1920s, just as Australia’s rural economy began to recover, so did other economies.

This would shake shit up for Australia big time.

The United States, Canada and Argentina began producing agricultural surpluses for the global market. This created a global oversupply of Australia’s main exports: wheat and sheep.

Shit.

The money from the gold rush years before had all but disappeared.

The Australian government was borrowing vast sums of money at this point to stay afloat - sums that vanished increasingly quickly as the economy slowed.

Things were not looking good.

10.October 24, 1929: October 24th, 1929.

A day remembered as Black Tuesday. The American stock market crash of the 20th century, also known as the Wall Street Crash of 1929, flattened not just the US economy, but global economies.

During the 1920s, the US stock market had undergone rapid expansion, reaching its peak in August 1929 after a period of wild speculation during the roaring twenties.

But by then, production had already declined and unemployment had risen, leaving stocks in great excess of their real value. Other causes included low wages, the proliferation of debt, a struggling agricultural sector and an excess of large bank loans that could not be liquidated.

Panic set in, and on October 24th, Black Thursday, a record 12,894,650 shares were traded.

Investment companies and leading bankers attempted to stabilize the market by buying up great blocks of stock, producing a moderate rally on Friday.

On Monday, however, the storm broke anew, and the market went into free fall. Black Monday was followed by Black Tuesday, in which stock prices collapsed completely and 16,410,030 shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day.

Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors, and stock tickers ran hours behind because the machinery could not handle the tremendous volume of trading.

In a flash, stock prices declined by 25 percent.

By 1932, stocks were worth only about 20 percent of their value in the summer of 1929. The stock market crash of 1929 was not the sole cause of the Great Depression, but it did act to accelerate a global economic collapse. https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/1929-stock- market- crash#:~:text=The%20stock%20market%20crash%20of%201 929%20was%20not%20the%20sole, 30%20percent%20of%20the%20workforce.

By 1933, nearly half of America’s banks had failed, and unemployment was approaching 15 million people, or 30 percent of the workforce.

The world panicked.

Under the weight of the oncoming Great Depression, the Australian economy collapsed with unemployment reaching a peak of 32% in 1932.

That’s so terrible. The worst the US unemployment rate got during 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, was 14.8%.

Well over twice that percentage unemployed in Australia during the Great Depression. In the US during 1932, the unemployment rate was 23.6%.

Australia got hit HARD. https://www.thebalance.com/unemployment-rate-by- year-3305506

Wheat and sheep prices plummeted.

Hard, HARD days for Aussie farmers.

The government promised subsidies for their wheat, but those subsidies never came because the government was as broke as the fucking farmers.

And the goddamn Emus [ ee-myoo ] showed up.

11.1932:

Let’s reset a bit.

We’re in 1932.

We have a bunch of Aussie World War I vets trying to farm out a living in the middle of a global economic depression— and the view from their back porch looks like a scene straight out of Jurassic Park.

In 1932, a mob of approximately 20,000 Emus [ ee-myoo ] shows up in Western Australia.

Previously, the farmers would go out with their guns and hunt the birds in the bounty system, collecting their carcasses for cash.

But now - there were just TOO MANY EMUS. Literally too many for them to shoot. They couldn’t afford all the bullets because they found out that emus are real, REAL tough.

Because they were so fast and alert, they were A) hard to shoot and you’d often lose a handful of bullets before you hit one, and then B) when you DID hit one these tough fuckers just wouldn’t go down. They’d often have to be shot five, six times, before they could be killed.

(Aussie accent) “You call that a bullet? That ain’t a bullet, mate. Bugger off, you silly cunts. Let me eat my wheat in peace!”

Some farmers tried putting up fences, but the giant calf muscled- birds NBA jammed that shit and either hopped over, or, slammed into the fences and broke them.

And then, they’d started eating all the sweet wheat inside.

And then making things even worse - those fences had also kept out rabbits, who now were like, “FUCK YEAH, BRO!”, and they peter cotton-tailed their little bunny asses inside the farms after the fences were knocked down, and they ate whatever scraps the emus didn’t.

Seeing how sturdy the birds were, and how well they could take a bullet from their hunting rifles and keep running—these farmers - these WW1 vets - knew they needed bigger guns.

So they called on the Australian military to help them.

They wanted some Lewis automatic rifle/machine guns.

Widely used by British troops in World War I, this motherfucker was devastating. It would be used all the way through the Korean War.

In both World War I and II, the Lewis automatic was used as the machine gun on aircraft.

The Lewis gun was gas-operated and could fire 500 to 600 rounds of per minute. They had a maximum distance of 3,500 yards and an effective range of 880 yards. They used a top-mounted pan magazine that held 47 or 97 rounds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_gun

And THIS is the gun they would bring to the Emu [ee-myoo].

Holy shit.

Fuck bringing a gun to a knife fight.

They were bringing an atomic bomb to a thumb-wrestling match.

To discuss their violent solution to the Emu [ ee-myoo ] problem, a group of the ex-soldiers met with…not the head of the Agricultural department or an expert on Emus [ ee-myoo ] - but the Minister of Defense.

Sir George Pearce.

He’s an interesting guy.

Sir George Foster Pearce was born on January 14th, 1870 at Mount Barker, South Australia, fifth of eleven children of English parents James Pearce, blacksmith, and his wife Jane.

Pearce was educated at Red Hill Public School but left at age 11. He started doing some farm work which he found 'hard and unpleasant.’

Pretty sure that’s how all eleven year-olds find farm work.

He soon left home and became a carpenter in Adelaide [ ad-l-eyd ] - capital of South Australia - but, after losing work in the depression of 1891, he moved to Perth where he found a job doing more carpenter work.

He joined a union - the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners which would lead to political activism and to a long career in politics.

By 1893, Pearce was an active member of the Trades and Labor Council and in its Progressive Political League.

By 1900, he was elected to the Senate and went on to hold a variety of positions, including…. Minister of Defense.

He began his career in the Labor Party but later joined the National Labor Party, the Nationalist Party, and the United Australia Party.

And he served as a cabinet minister under prime ministers from all four parties.

He was Australia’s Minister for Defense a bunch of times from 1908 to 1909, then again in 1910 to 1913, then 1914 to 1921, and finally 1932 to 1934.

His 24 years in the Aussie cabinet and 37 years as an Aussie senator are both still records.

Interestingly, he was pretty anti-military in his younger years.

When Pearce first entered the Senate he was skeptical of militarism. Militarism, especially in the form of a standing army, he believed would impede social reform.

But when Russia was defeated by Japan in 1905, Pearce changed his mind on the issue of compulsory training. He thought the Australia was in danger of being attacked by Japan and needed strong naval and military defenses, as well as a closer relationship with Britain.

Haha! I love that.

“We don’t NEED a military!”

Cut to sudden threat of being attacked by someone else’s military.

“HEY! Why the FUCK do we not have a military !?!”

One of the many reasons I’m so supportive of the military - and why we here at Bad Magic Productions donate to the military - when you need them, you really, REALLY need them.

Pearce went on to believe that compulsory education and military service were actually VERY compatible with and essential to democracy. These things implied equality of sacrifice— that you couldn’t claim to live in a democracy and have your voice heard along with everyone else’s if you weren’t willing to make similar sacrifices to everyone else.

Reading that makes me honestly feel guilty. Wish someone would’ve forced my young, crazy ass into the military for a year or two. I wonder how much more together we’d all be as a culture - how much less polarized - if we all HAD to serve a few years? If we all had to sacrifice?

Easy for me to say now, I guess, right? But it is a regret of mine.

Anyway!

As Minister of Defense, Pearce excelled in initiating and overseeing the highly complex arrangements designed to create a standing fighting force of 127,000 men by 1920.

He figured out new purchasing procedures, new forms of education for soldiers and officers, and negotiated with Britain on naval matters.

He was shy and mustachioed, with expressive brown eyes, and valued calmness and orderliness.

He was, by many accounts, a solid man who inspired confidence — and, most importantly, he was ready to pay more than lip service to his stated principles.

He was the man these Western Australian farmers needed. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/pearce-sir-george-foster-7996

These ex-soldiers knew they needed machine guns to save their farms, and the the Agricultural Department sure as shit didn’t have them.

When Pearce was informed of their situation and heard their request, he said, “sure, fuck it, why not?”

But there were conditions!

He couldn’t justify giving these civilian veterans guns that had literally been used on aircrafts.

Pearce’s first stipulation was that only military personnel would be able to use the machine gun.

Seems reasonable.

He agreed to have the Western Australian government finance transport for troops, but stipulated that the farmers would have to provide food, accommodation, AND ammunition.

That seems shitty, BUT, remember - the farmers aren’t the only ones hurting right now. The government is also still almost broke.

Pearce also, apparently, was supportive of the idea to kill emus in mass, because the birds provided good “target practice.”

I know that sounds cold, but, he wasn’t wrong.

It’s not like they could’ve gotten away with using dudes to get used to gunners hitting moving targets.

(Aussie accent) “C’mon, Jimmy. Don’t be a dickhead! Put this metal trash bin over your head and run around and let the boys fire off some rounds.”

Authorizing the machine gunning of emus may also have been a political move on Pearce’s part.

At the time, Western Australia wanted to secede from the Australian Federation.

Pearce thought by helping the struggling Western Australian farmers, he could win over some hearts and minds in the region that would then support him and support remaining part of one nation.

Secessionism is still a hot debate topic in W.A. by the way.

A poll run in October 2020 found that 28% of Western Australians support Western Australia leaving the Australian federation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Secessionism_in_Western_Australia

The slaughter of thousands of Emus [ ee-myoo ] was a good PR opportunity.

To help with publicity, Pearce hired a cinematographer from Fox Movietone - a news reel that ran from 1928 to 1964 - to document it all.

He wanted visual proof of the great victory he would help the farmers achieve!

After he hired the cinematographer, the media immediately got ahold of the story and started making jokes.

Of course they did. He’s sending in machine gunners to take out Emu.

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/2318780

12. October 1932: By October of 1932, it was time for military action.

The Emus [ ee-myoo ] had to be stopped.

The special Emu [ ee-myoo ] task force would fall under the command of Major G. P. W. Meredith of the Seventh Heavy Battery of the Royal Australian Artillery.

There isn’t much info on him out there.

Major Meredith commanded soldiers Sergeant S. McMurray and Gunner J. O’Halloran.

And uh… that was it.

Three professional soldiers…and a camera guy. Plus ten thousand rounds of ammunition and two Lewis guns.

I picture a general wishing them good luck.

(general- Aussie) “Alright, mates. Today’s the day we make history. It’s gonna be scary. There are 20,000 of them and only three of us. It’s important we do not flash anything shiny at these bastards. Put some tape over your belt buckles and take off your rings and watches unless you want to die today. Larry - today is NOT the day to debut that new sequin jacket. Last thing - do NOT aim for their heads. They are quite TINY. And the bob around on their long, creepy necks with no real rhyme or reason. Godspeed, gentlemen. God Speed.”

In hindsight, I’m sure they wished they had sent in more troops. A LOT more.

Not that even more troops would’ve assured victory.

Those emus - they’re a crafty bunch.

13.November 1, 1932: On November 1st, 1932, the Emu [ ee-myoo ] hunters were ready to go, but then their operation was delayed heavy rainfall that caused the Emu [ ee-myoo ]s to scatter over a wider area.

Delay of game!

14.November 2, 1932: With the heavy rains coming to an end the following day on November 2nd, the trio - plus the camera man - gave the mission its official start.

According to one newspaper account, they were tasked to collect 100 Emu [ ee-myoo ] skins. The Emu [ ee-myoo ]’s feathers would be used to make some hats.

Sounds easy enough. Feeling pretty optimistic.

They’re already making plans for what they’re going to do with the dead Emu [ ee-myoo ]s when they have them.

Gonna cook up some nice steaks.

The men travelled to Campion - that veteran built townsite in the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia.

Not a very populated area by any means, like we talked about earlier.

The closest actual town is Mukinbudin - population 281.

Soon, the men came upon mob of around 50 Emu [ ee-myoo ].

And these emu were NOT fucking about.

They had butterfly knives. They wore matching bandanas and leather jackets. Some of them had tattoos. Earrings.

Most of them smoked and cursed. A few seemed drunk.

A couple were carrying 38 specials.

Their feathers all slicked back with grease.

Chains connected to their wallets.

This wasn’t a MOB of Emus. It was a fucking gang. And they weren’t going down without a fight.

GOD I wish that was true.

No.

When the soldiers showed up they just looked at ‘em for a moment and then went back to munching on their wheat.

Along with the three soldiers and the camera man were a group of local settlers who were interested in seeing how this would all play out.

This fight had an audience!

I picture dudes with cans of Fosters in their hands. Big foam fingers. (Cheers) “WHO…. ARE….WE?.... A.I.F!!!” “WHO…. ARE….WE?.... A.I.F!!!”

The Battle of Campion was about to begin.

The two gunners opened fire, and then the first attack of the war fizzled out as the birds ran off a bit and were now too far away to shoot.

DAMN IT!

If only the enemy would stay perfectly still - war would be so much easier!

The humans regrouped with the help of the settlers.

The settlers tried to heard the Emus [ ee-myoos ] into an ambush - but the birds were too smart for that.

They split into small groups and ran in different directions, making difficult targets.

(Aussie) “Fuck me dead! Oy! These wankers are a might more trouble than we thought!”

A second round of gun fire came and a reported “number of birds” were killed. That number was never reported. Probably because it was super low.

The Emus [ ee-myoo ] retreated, sort of.

They ran away like animals tend to do when being shot at.

Later that day, another, smaller mob was spotted. The soldiers attacked and shot “perhaps a dozen,” according to quotes given in local newspapers.

They’ve now killed, you know, maybe 20 or 30 of the roughly 20,000 emus fucking up farms in W.A.

Still have a LITTLE ways to go to win this war.

Confidence is already waning a bit.

The machine gunners immediately realize these motherfuckers are AGILE. Really hard to get a clean shot on the second one once you open fire on the first one you’re shooting at, if you even the first one doesn’t bolt before you fire.

AND - they are really, REALLY tough.

The Emus [ ee-myoo ] seemed to be almost bulletproof.

Their thick feathers meant they could take 4 or 5 shots from even the Lewis gun before succumbing to their injuries.

I imagine the farmers were like, “yeah, that’s what we’ve been saying, ya fuckwits. They’re fucking dinosaurs.”

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/2315329

15.November 4, 1932:

Two days later, November 4th, 1932, the Battle of the Dam is fought.

And the Emus [ ee-myoo ] get some revenge.

Major Meredith had established an ambush spot near a local dam.

And that morning, more than 1,000 Emus [ ee-myoo ] were spotted heading towards the soldiers’ position.

Picture them with those leather jackets, the bandanas, the cigarettes dangling out of their tiny beaks, the earrings dangling from, well, I don’t know where since they don’t since they don’t really have ears - just pinned to the sides of their tiny pinheads.

Picture switchblades held in tiny wings. Maybe a few of them are on motorcycles somehow.

That’s not how it was, but, VERY fun to picture.

With some experience under their belts, the gunners waited until the dino-birds were close before firing.

Then the fucking gun - they just had one this day - it jammed after killing only a dozen birds. The rest of the birds then bounded off into the distance and the soldiers wouldn’t see any of them for the rest of the day.

So - maybe not “REVENGE” persay, but the emus certainly didn’t get massacred as planned.

The media ate it up. The funniest war was getting funnier.

One newspaper wrote:

"The Emus [ ee-myoo ] have proved that they are not so stupid as they are usually considered to be.

Each mob has its leader, always an enormous black-plumed bird standing fully six-feet high, who keeps watch while his fellows busy themselves with the wheat.

At the first suspicious sign, he gives the signal, and dozens of heads stretch up out of the crop. A few birds will take fright, starting a headlong stampede for the scrub, the leader always remaining until his followers have reached safety.”

Haha!

They were clearly letting their imaginations go to. They don’t actually have leaders who behave like that.

I bet some Aussies - not the farmers - ate this up.

They’d been fed a steady diet of negative news for the past 20 years— first World War I, then a pandemic, then a global depression.

I bet it was such a relief for the average person to read about something silly.

Over the next few days, Meredith and his merry men traveled south.

Locals reported that the Emu [ ee-myoo ]s in that area were more tame.

The trio and their cameraman hoped for more success.

They wouldn’t find it.

Frustrated, Meredith got creative with his Emu [ ee-myoo ] machine-gunning tactics, and mounted one of the guns on a roof of truck.

And this didn’t work AT ALL. The roads were rough, and these trucks were only about to go along at 15-20 miles per hour. While the Emu were running away at 30 miles per hour.

The birds easily ran away.

AND - the gunner had such a hard time keeping his balance that he couldn’t even fire a shot if an Emu [ ee-myoo ] had been in shooting distance.

AND - even with the truck got close to one Emu- it would ONLY get close to one - the rest had scattered.

They would need hundreds of trucks to mount a proper attack.

Thinking about these guys chasing the Emus, I keep hearing the old Benny Hill theme song playing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK6TXMsvgQg BENNY HILL THEME.

Just chaos. The gunner bouncing around in the back of the truck. Yelling at the driver.

Meredith yelling at the gunner for the man to shoot.

A spotter looking through binoculars to find an emu and then one is standing right next to him before going, “Meep! Meep!” and just running off like the Road runner getting chased by Wile E Coyote.

Pandemonium!

The truck experiment would end badly, to put it mildly.

An Emu [ ee-myoo ] they ran over got tangled in the truck’s steering equipment.

Unable to steer, the truck crashed into someone’s fence, destroying half of the fence. The vehicle was damaged badly, too.

Some reports say the truck was totally wrecked too.

And the Emu [ ee-myoo ] that was run over may have been the lone death.

When examining the body, they discovered that the bird was still running at full speed with five slugs in its body before it died.

16.November 8, 1932: November 8th, not yet a week in to the Great Emu [ ee-myoo ] War, the men did some math to see how their initial efforts fared.

They tallied that 2,500 rounds had been fired, which was 25% percent of the allotted total. With 2,500 rounds they estimated they’d killed something like…. 50 birds.

The settlers were generous and estimated that the expedition had killed between 200 and 500 Emu [ ee-myoo ].

Not good.

There were still roughly 20,000 Emu [ ee-myoo ] running around, eating up that sweet wheat.

They hadn’t helped the situation… at all.

Meredith did note in his report that his side “took no casualties.” That’s something, at least.

One critic, an ornithologist named Dominic Serventy said:

“The machine-gunners' dreams of point blank fire into serried masses of Emu [ ee-myoo ]s were soon dissipated.

The Emu [ ee-myoo ] command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic.

A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month.”

When one New South Wales state Labor politician inquired if the soldiers deserved a medal for participating in this “war,” a politician in Western Australia replied that the medal should go to the Emus [ ee-myoo ], who “have won every round so far.”

This was not the PR dream Pearce had envisioned. His plan was not saving anyone’s farm.

Also on November 8th, members in the Australian House of Representatives discussed the merits of the operation.

The media had been pretty merciless and the bad press weighed heavily on the minds of those representatives.

They voted to take away the machine guns that very day. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/4509731

Meredith would make some interesting observations about the whole event.

Years later, in an interview with the Sun Herald, Meredith said, “If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds it would face any army in the world ... They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. They are like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullets could not stop.”

The Emus [ ee-myoo ] had won!

They celebrated by ruining more fences, and sharing more wheat with their rabbit buddies.

Making this all even more of a disaster, the farmers noted that November that warmer than usual weather had worsened the drought they were experiencing, and the drought had brought MORE Emu [ ee-myoo ] in looking for food.

Following those initial battles, there were now more Emu [ ee- myoo ] in Western Australia than ever before.

The farmers quickly again turned to the government for assistance.

This time they recruited James Mitchell, the Premier of Western Australia, who gave his strong support for renewing military assistance.

This guy was basically, for US Suckers, Western Australia’s governor.

He was given a report that said the initial Emu [ ee-myoo ] war “battles” had resulted in 300 dead Emu [ ee-myoo ]s.

And for some reason, this was deemed enough of a win for him to endorse continuing the war.

He got Pearce on board, who once again approved the requests, and the second wave of the Emu [ ee-myoo ] war began.

17.November 12, 1932: November 12th, 1932.

In the second round of negotiations, the military agreed to lend the more machine guns to the Western Australian government, expecting that the Western Australian government would provide experienced people to shoot them.

But there weren’t many experienced machine gunners in the area, so Major Meredith was once again put on the front lines.

Meredith and his men, back in action.

A few locals were also now added to the team.

18. November 13, 1932: On November 13th, the team was back on the battlefield.

In the first two days, they gunned down around 40 birds.

At this rate, in two months, there would only be 19,000 wheat eating emus in the area instead of 20,000.

Unless more showed up, of course. 19. November 15, 1932:

On the third day of their second mission, November 15, the team didn’t kill any birds.

So, at this new rate, they could spend the rest of their lives hunting these fuckers with machine guns and never reduced their numbers.

This is going really well.

In various “battles” over the next month, they would take down an average of 100 Emu [ ee-myoo ] per week.

Now back up to rate of being able to reduced the overall emu numbers by 25% in just a year if they hunted them ever single day.

But then, more would be born when they migrated away, so actually, well, this still isn’t going well.

20.December 10, 1932: On December 10th, Meredith was called back to parliament to present some math.

In his report, Meredith claimed he and his men had made 986 kills and fired 9,860 rounds.

Though they’d done better than the first time, it was still a rate of 10 rounds to every confirmed kill.

No one was happy with this ratio.

They couldn’t afford to keep using ammo at that rate.

Meredith then claimed that including the wounded birds that had probably died as a result of the injuries that they had sustained from their rounds, they maybe had killed 2,500 Emu [ ee-myoo ].

That sounded a lot better, but not good enough.

Meredith was taken off his mission.

The media continued to find all of this hilarious.

21. December 1932: By December of 1932, word of the “Great Emu [ ee-myoo ] War” had left Australia and spread.

It reached the UK, where animal rights activists were not amused.

Some protested the culling, saying it was tantamount to “extermination of the rare Emu [ ee-myoo ].”

Which was not true.

There were still so, so, SO many emu.

Easy for those conservationists, their farms weren’t getting fucked.

Some people in Australia weren’t happy with any of this either.

Dominic Serventy and Hubert Whittell, two eminent Australian ornithologists aka bird scientists - described the war as “an attempt at the mass destruction of the birds.”

True.

It was.

But was it justified mass destruction.

All depends on how you view it. If you believe man should be in charge of nature, than it was justified.

If you believed man should bend to nature’s will, then it was not justified.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/the-great- Emu [ ee-myoo ]-war-in-which-some-large-flightless-birds- unwittingly-foiled-the-australian-army/ 22.1934: Two years later, in 1934, the Western Australia farmers requested assistance from the military again.

But this time, wary of the whooping the government took in the press before, the military didn’t help out.

As part of their requests, in addition to machine guns, the farmers asked for bombs.

Seriously, they asked if some bombs could be dropped on the emus from low-flying planes.

That is so funny to me.

(aussie accent) “Alright. Guns didn’t work. I accept that. But what about bombs? Let’s bomb these dickheads? C’mon. Oi. Don’t be some kind of wombat, fuck-stick. Let’s BOMB US SOME FOCKIN’ BIRDS!”

Unsurprisingly, this request was not granted.

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/55872191

The bounty system of getting rid of the Emu [ ee-myoo ] was then put back in place, meaning that it was up to the ex-soldier farmers to cull the creatures themselves.

And, they did a pretty good job.

There were a reported 57,034 bounties claimed over a six-month period in 1934.

Certainly WAY more successful than the government efforts.

And if you’re worried that they were exterminating those emus, don’t worry.

They’d been having some real good mating seasons, and despite this high number of kills, the Emu [ ee-myoo ] population of Western Australia continued to grow.

23. 1943: In 1943, the farmers yet again asked for assistance from the government.

And again, the government decides NOT to step in.

24. 1948: STILL getting their crops fucked up by Emus, the farmers request government assistance again in 1948.

Denied again.

25.November 1950: Finally, the farmers would get more help in November of 1950.

Hugh Leslie raised the issues of Emu [ ee-myoo ]s in Parliament and urged Army Minister Josiah Francis to give some .303 ammunition from the military to the farmers.

The minister approved the release of 500,000 rounds of ammo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Leslie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Francis

26. 1950-Today: Since the 50s, there have been many other attempts to shoot or poison large numbers of Emus [ ee-myoo ] and the resilient birds have continued to thrive.

In the end, what finally changed the game for human-Emu [ ee- myoo ] relations was stronger, better fences.

As quality increased and prices decreased, more farmers were able to afford fences that didn’t fall down when Emus [ ee-myoo ] battered them.

I guess it IS true that good fences make good neighbors.

Finally, emus and farmers can coexist.

No more machine guns.

Wild Emus [ ee-myoo ] now have a stable population of around 700,000 mature adults in Australia.

And some farmers even like them around now.

Some farmers see the birds as beneficial because they eat the burrs that tangle in their sheep’s wool as well as caterpillars and grasshoppers that munch on their crops.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/the-great- Emu [ ee-myoo ]-war-in-which-some-large-flightless-birds- unwittingly-foiled-the-australian-army/

The Emu [ ee-myoo ] War are over.

Now let’s hop out of this timeline and take a quick look at some other contentious relationships between Australians and their beastly neighbors before wrapping up today.

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE OUTRO

VII. Examples of Aussia Ecological Whoopsies:

As more Europeans moved to Australia in the late 19th century, after a gold rush, they ran into more and more problems with local wildlife.

They also brought in some non-native creatures that flourished to the point of destroying ecological systems and changing the country-slash- continent forever.

From rabbits introduced for sport to wild camels that had to be culled via helicopter, Australia has experienced a number of animal disasters.

Let’s talk about rabbits, cats and brumbies.

A. Rabbits: We’ll start with the bunnies.

For more than 150 years, Australia has been plagued by rabbits.

Specifically— non-native, European-import rabbits.

First introduced by an English settler as targets for causal hunting in 1859, the European rabbit population soon exploded to an estimated TEN BILLION FUCKING BUNNIES, contributing to extensive environmental damage and the extinction of some native species.

Ever heard the phrase “fuck like rabbits”? It doesn’t come from nowhere.

Some rabbits can pregnant at just four months old. And their fertile all but about three days a month.

The gestation period for a rabbit is roughly only 30 days, and they can breed again nearly immediately after birth. That means that a rabbit can have 11 or 12 litters a year. The average litter size is five, but can be as high as twelve.

One female rabbit can theoretically kick out over fifty rabbits a year.

And since these rabbits live about nine years. One female rabbit could have over 500 other rabbits in its life.

Does that happen? Not sure one rabbit has ever had 500 rabbits, but, lots of rabbits have had over 100 rabbits.

SO MANY FUCKING RABBITS.

Over the past century, biologists tried—and largely failed—to stop the rabbits from destroying Australia with fences, poisons, mass hunting, and none of that worked.

They had to use biological warfare to reduce their numbers.

Accidental biological warfare.

Scientists unintentionally released a virus deadly to rabbits in 1995.

Whoops!

Government researchers were experimenting with the rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV) on Wardang Island, off South Australia’s coast, and then some renegade flies picked up the pathogen and transported it to the mainland.

And luckily, this containment failure became a smashing success.

The virus eradicated an estimated 60 percent of Australia’s rabbits, acting with particular lethality in arid areas.

Since 1995, it’s brought down the bunny population a lot— and allowed some other endangered native mammals to recover, according to a 2016 study in the journal Conservation Biology.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/virus-taming-australia-s- bunny-menace-and-giving-endangered-species-new-life

Despite the reduction in numbers, bunnies constantly fucking bunnies remains a problem.

There are still an estimated 150 million feral, non-native rabbits in Australia.

If only that guy hadn’t needed something fuzzy to shoot at back in 1859.

B. Feral Cats: Feral cats are also a big problem in Australia.

A real big problem.

British colonists brought domestic cats as pets to Australia about 200 years ago.

It was one of two continents - the other being Antarctica - that was cat less.

Fast forward 200 years and Australia is bursting at the seams with cats today.

SO MANY cats.

(KEMPER) “I’ll need so many sticks, MOTHER!”

In one study, it was reported that 99.8 percent of the land in Australia has feral cats running around on it.

Another study — which was compiled by dozens of the country’s top environmental scientists from numerous other studies across the outback — estimated that there are up to 5.6 million feral cats roaming Australia’s countryside.

5.6 million is significantly less than those 10 billion rabbits… but - still such a crazy number.

And it’s a problem.

Cats are one of nature’s most prolific killers, and it’s estimated that all those feral cats kill 75 million native animals EVERY NIGHT across Australia, including birds, frogs, small mammals, and reptiles.

The cats have been blamed for the extinction of about 20 Australian species, ranging from small ground-dwelling birds to medium-sized mammals— mammals with names like the bilby, bandicoot, bettong [ buh-tawng] and numbat [ nuhm-bat ].

None of those names are made up.

Feral cats threaten the survival of over 100 native species today.

And all of this has lead to a sequel of sorts to the Great Emu [ ee- myoo ] War.

But this time, starring cats.

As you can probably imagine, PETA is not happy about this.

Back in 2015, the Australian government announced that it intended to kill more than 2 million feral cats by 2020 through shooting, trapping, and poisoning.

This culling is ongoing.

And Bojangles is laughing so hard.

Sorry cat lovers. Our canine mascot - not real sensitive when it comes to cats.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/magazine/australia-cat- killing.html https://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/invasive-species/feral- animals-australia/feral-cats https://nypost.com/2017/01/06/australia-is-overrun-with-feral-cats/ https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/magazine/australia-cat- killing.html https://www.peta.org.au/issues/feral-cats/

C.Brumby Shooting: If you didn’t like hearing about killing bunnies and kitties, you’re not gonna like hearing about killing brumbies either.

Along with bunny and kitty mass murder, Australia is home to “brumby shooting.”

“Brumby shooting” is simply shooting with the intent to eradicate feral horses, or “brumbies” in Australia.

It’s been done since the 1800s, and it’s still a thing, although there are always petitions against it.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-29/victorian-brumby-cull- alpine-challenge-rejected-by-supreme-court/12301442

Brumby shooting was a booming industry from the 1870s to the mid-1890s. It had such a deep impact on culture that it was often the subject of many songs and works of literature, as well as a popular sporting pastime.

And there are legit arguments for brumby shooting.

It’s estimated that there are over a million feral horses in Australia.

That’s so many horses.

Ranchers need grazing land and water for domestic herds, and those herds can’t compete with brumbies if their numbers get too big.

The horses also damage the environment and spread disease.

If their numbers aren’t culled, other species will go extinct. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/230263679 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/28/world/australia/brumbies- horses-culling.html

These horses didn’t just fall out of the sky.

Man brought them to the land down under.

Horses were first imported into Australia in 1788 as work animals.

By 1800, about 200 horses had made their way to Australia. These bad-ass motherfuckers survived a long trip to get there, they were resilient creatures.

And from 1820 to 1860, the badass horse population in Australia increased a hundredfold— from 3,969 to 431,525.

And some of them escaped, bred in the wild, and created a massive population of wild horses.

By the 1850s, there were wild horses in every district in the colony.

In 1860, at least 100,000 wild horses were reported in New South Wales alone.

In June of 1865, The New South Wales Impounding Act was approved, giving authority for landholders and squatters to destroy unbranded horses or cattle on their land, brumbies that were eating up all the food for their own livestock.

This led to a new profession— professional brumby shooters.

Need these horses gone from your land? Pay someone to shoot them.

Newspaper reports of the 1870s described the difficult lives of professional brumby shooters: carrying out unpleasant work from dawn to dusk with few material comforts and inadequate pay.

In the first half of 1871 alone, 1,527 brumbies were killed.

In 1927, the Western Star And Roma Advertiser reported that a singer shooter killed 2,000 brumbies in a season at one shilling each.

One group of hunters claimed they collected 25,000 horse hides over a few years.

And they continue to be killed - or “culled” - today.

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/230263679

Some Aussies are disgusted by this, some wish more were killed.

Emus, cats, bunnies, wild horses. Just four of many creatures Aussies continue to debate the ethics of going to war against.

Australia has also had problems with feral donkeys, feral pigs, feral goats, feral toads, feral water buffalos and even feral camels.

VIII.Recap:

The Great Emu [ ee-myoo ] War.

What a weird story.

Before we recap and call it a day, one more sponsor. Sorry about that.

PLAY AT BEGGINING https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=tiThUOVNzU0

Today’s Timesuck is brought to you by Machine Gun Neddy’s Emu, Cat, Rabbit, and Brumby Buffet Shack!

“G’day, mate! I’m Neddy Jones! And if you like a good ripsnorter of a meal, if you ain’t some kind of fuckwit, pull up to my shack, and grab one of this week’s specials.

Fried cattails. You ain’t lived ‘till you’ve tasted some of that kitty.

Or how ‘bout some Brumby nuggets! Don’t be a cunt, put a sock in it and eat some pony!

Or what about some bunny stew? Oi! Tell the ankle biters there’s no easter egg hunt this year - peter cotton tail got nailed! And he’s fucking delicious.

All this for just $9.99 at Machine Gun Neddy’s Emu, Cat, Rabbit, and Brumby Buffet Shack. It’s us or them, mates. Us or them. Oi!”

PRESS STOP

Sorry about that. That seemed really insensitive. But, Neddy pays really well.

Anyway, The Great Emu [ ee-myoo ] War.

Not really a “war”, of course.

“War” is just an interesting way to frame the struggle between veterans of World War I who just wanted to eek out a living in Western Australia’s plains and the Emus [ ee-myoo ] that wanted to eat all their crops.

I imagine this Suck will make a fair amount of meatsacks sad.

As an animal lover, I get it.

I don’t like to think about my little fur babies Penny and Ginger being hunted or killed.

Of course not.

BUT - if there were millions or billions of doodles wreaking havoc on the environment - if they were causing other animals to go extinct, I would not oppose their culling.

I’d be sad, sure! Doodles being slaughtered - my god - that’s like Care Bears being murdered.

It’s so fucking sad.

BUT - I would understand the logic.

If thousands of ‘em were ruining farmers lives and livelihoods, I would understand that SOMETHING has to be done.

If there were eating all the food that, I don’t know - what else is super cute? - if they were eating all of the food that koala bears needed to live. If it was some doodles die, or ALL Koala bears die - then I guess some doodles die.

Sorry Gigi, you have to go. Penny Pooper stays.

Tough choices must be made!

But seriously, I accept that life is just brutal in some ways. Don’t like that. But accept it.

Nature is brutal.

That’s what I kept thinking about with all of this.

Anyone who is really, really, against hunting - okay - I understand the emotion behind that belief.

But for me, when I think about hunting, or culling, or whatever, I think about stuff like that cheetah eating that imapala’s ass.

Such a brutal scene. And one of many. That shit happens EVERY DAY in nature.

And you can’t stop it.

What we can do is try to manage game as best we can, be could stewards of the land, and kill has efficiently and ethically as possible.

I think that’s as good as it gets.

Sometimes I think we forget that we’re just animals too.

And if it’s okay for the Cheetah to hunt, why isn’t okay for us meatsacks to do the same?

We’re just animals too.

Time now for some takeaways.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS INTRO

IX.Top Five Takeaways

1. Number One: Number one! The World War 1 vets turned farmers had such a problem with the thousands of living dinosaurs fucking up their livelihoods that they turned to Australia’s Minister of War, and asked for big ass machine guns.

And got some!

2. Number Two: Number two! The Australian media at the time had fun with this story. The absurdity of it all made for a number of fun “war” stories.

People really needed some silly news after World War I, the Spanish Flu, and the Great Depression.

3. Number Three: Number three! Australia waged war on their own national bird. The bird on their national crest. Watch your asses bald eagles. Don’t think we won’t come for you too if you cross the wrong line.

4. Number Four: Number four! The Western Australian farmers got so frustrated with emus destroying their crops, they eventually asked the government if they could use low-flying planes to drop bombs on Emu [ ee-myoo ]s.

They were denied, which was probably for the best.

5. Number Five: Number five! New info!

In looking into the Emu [ ee-myoo ], it was referenced a few times that the Emu [ ee-myoo ] has a tiny brain.

Birds in general definitely are not thought to be big thinks, hence the expression of someone having a “bird brain.”

BUT - although their brain is indeed small— an Emu [ ee-myoo ]’s brain accounts for 0.06% of its body mass, whereas a human’s is 2 percent of its body mass— it’s also packed full of useful info and instincts.

Birds in general actually have very efficient little minds.

Some birds are capable of using tools, recognizing themselves in the mirror, and saving food for future use. T

How is this possible?

A study published on June 13th, 2016 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences tried to figure it out.

Researchers counted the number of neurons in 28 bird species, dissecting the brain and coloring neurons with a dye so they could count how many there were.

For comparison, they found that humans placed at number one with 86 billion neurons in the brain, while the next closest was the baboon with 10 billion.

A pig has just over 2 billion. A Q Anon supporter has around seven.

C’mon. Gosh Dang.

Emus [ ee-myoo ] have 1.34 billion.

Not a lot - BUT, in terms of relative size, it’s HUGE.

Most birds pack in way more neurons per gram of brain tissue than other animals.

When you rank animals by the density of neurons in the brain— how many neurons per gram of brain— gold crests, starlings and black birds top the charts.

So - the term “bird brain” isn’t really all that insulting.

Those brains are actually pretty efficient and impressive little balls of thinking meat.

https://qz.com/707508/scientists-looked-inside-bird-brains-and- found-theyre-far-more-sophisticated-than-yours/

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS OUTRO

X.Final Announcements

A.Episode has been sucked!: The Great Emu War has been sucked! I hope I did it justice. I hope my accent was tolerable. B.Thank you to Timesuck Team:

Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions Team for all the help in making Timesuck! Queen of Bad Magic Lynze Cummins, Reverend Doctor Joe Paisley, the Script Keeper Zaq Flannary, Sophie “Fact Sorceress” Evans, Bit Elixir, and Logan “Art Warlock” Keith running BadMagicMerch.com and working on our socials along with Liz Hernandez!

And again - the new and improved customer service email is [email protected]

Thanks to all of those who’ve joined the Cult of the Curious private Facebook group - almost 26,000 members now. Yip yip yaw!

Thanks Liz Hernandez and her All Seeing Eyes running the Cult of the Curious Facebook page.

Thanks to Beefsteak and the “Mod Squad” helping run Discord!

And thanks to all of your Space Lizards playing Timesuck Trivia on the Timesuck app: Bodhi210 currently in the round 8 lead with 4151 points.

C.Next Episode Preview:

Next week on Timesuck, we get controversial. We dig into Blackwater, the private military company, and its founder, Erik Prince.

Blackwater began in 1997, the brainchild of former Navy SEAL Erik Prince, of the ultra-wealthy Prince family. It started out as a private security firm providing training support to law enforcement.

And then it would become a behemoth.

Their first contract in Iraq was in the summer of 2003 when they secured a $21 million contract for Personal Security Detachment.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, Blackwater was one of several private security companies used to guard officials, security guards, and military installations, train the Iraqi army and police forces, and provide other support for armed forces.

And their actions in Iraq and Afghanistan became the subject of controversy, especially in the September 17th, 2007 shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians.

This incident would spark national interest in the number of private forces being used in Iraq.

Many started to wonder about the legality and ethics of it all.

How were these companies being run, by whom, and for what purposes? Were they actually helping the military or just trying to turn a profit?

We dig into the life of Erik Prince and Blackwater, next week on Timesuck.

I know so little - excited to learn a whole lot more soon.

Learn with me!

D.Segue to Timesucker Updates:

And now let’s head on over to this week’s Timesucker Updates!

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES INTRO

XI.Timesucker Updates

1. First update! Super Sucker Jennifer McKee would like to share an important message. Jennifer writes:

Hey Dan and crew!

Let me start by saying I love Timesuck and STD. I listen to both as I am writing up my clinical notes while at work. There have been a few times co-workers have asked me if I am okay because they can hear me in my office saying "Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck" when listening to S2D (I listen with headphones on so I don't know how loud I am being).

I am writing in because I am not sure if you ever look at the Timesuck Facebook page, but a lot of Space Lizards seem to be struggling with their mental health.

Maybe I am just seeing what I want because I am a psychologist and those posts stand out to me.

Anyway, I just had an idea that for a show you could have some MH professionals discuss therapy options, medications, etc.

Time suckers could also possibly send in questions for the professionals to discuss/answer. Just a thought as so many seem to be struggling. Keep up the good work! Thanks, Jen

Thanks, Jen!

I appreciate you enjoying the shows and appreciate what you do!

Not sure if a guest episode with mental health professionals would be right for Timesuck, BUT, I do realized the pandemic has been hard, hard, HARD on mental health for millions.

What I can do is encourage meatsacks to explore a number of new online mental health services.

The pandemic has made it easier to get counseling at home. Which I think is such a good thing. It opens up the possibility of getting treatment to so many more people.

One of our sponsors, Better Help is fantastic, and there are other options. There are a variety of free options. And free online support groups.

And there are so many people in the Cult of the Curious Facebook group happy to chat with others and happy to point people towards good places to help.

I highly encourage anyone really struggling with their mental health to take a few minutes, google stuff like “online mental health help” or just “mental health help” and SO MUCH COMES UP.

It’s never been easier to access mental health professionals.

Take advantage of the times we live in? What do you have to lose?

Nimrod wants you to get that help! Lucifina thinks being okay with not being okay is sexy as fuck.

Take that first step of just looking around a bit, meatsacks. Your life may literally depend on it.

Thank you Jen!

2. Now some words regarding the recent Armenian Genocide coming in from Glendale Sucker, Raffi Sarafian. Raffi writes:

Dear Almighty SuckMaster, I've been such huge fan of your standup and timesuck since the start! This is regarding the Armenian Genocide suck, and as an Armenian, I wanted to reach out and say how amazingly accurate you portrayed the episode.

Of all of the years of listening to timesuck, I've never had to take a break from listening for a day because it was just too much, and I mean that in the most sincere way.

The way you described every bit of the history and the timeline reminded me of all of the stories that my great grandmother would tell my brother, cousins and I growing up.

She was a survivor of the Genocide and in our household it was normal growing up and hearing all of the stories. My great grandmother's would tell us of the horrors and how her parents were slaughtered in front of her when she was 6, then had to hide in rubble for days surviving off of grass until some Turkish peasants found her and took her in and ultimately left her at an orphanage. Listening to this week's episode really triggered those memories so vividly of her telling us those stories that it brought me to tears while listening.

Not to create a somber message, but the opposite, that I've never heard such an accurate depiction and story of my people's tragedy in any other medium until this episode.

For that I would like to say thank you for telling our story, for spreading the word that many have tried for years, protested, marched and even been prosecuted/killed just to let the world know that hey we are still here, this horrible, inhumane act happened but we are still here. I'm proud to call myself a descendent of a survivor of the Armenian Genocide.

I know this message went on longer than expected but to close I'd like to express a phrase that Armenians like to say all the time which loosely translated means "We are few, but we are Armenian".

Thank you for taking the time to read this on or off the air, I appreciate you and the whole Timesuck team.

Praise Bojangles, Hail Nimrod. Your Loyal Space Lizard Raffi Sarafian Glendale, CA

Thank you Raffi!

I’m glad I did that Suck and wish I would’ve done it earlier.

Shame on the Turkish government for doing what is obviously the right thing and owning up to it. And shame on the Young Turks Youtube Channel for not changing their name. Truly disgusting.

Hail your great grandma, Raffi! I got to grow up with mine and felt so lucky. Glad you got to grow up with yours as well. What a blessing.

Now get a petition going in Glendale to pressure System of a Down to make a new full-length album.

Hail Nimrod, sir!

Also - next month, we are donating to an organization tied to Armenian genocide awareness.

3. Next up - Top Shelf Sack Nick Rineair got GOT! Twice. And now his shame is our amusement. Nick writes:

What the fuck man???

You timesucking son of a bitch finally got me!!! I like to pride myself on my wittiness and patients on not getting sucked into your nonsense!!!

But I was listening to your 136 Moonlanding episode while driving in crawling traffic due to snow and you started talking about the hoverboard and really had me convinced that they do exist and that they just haven’t passed safety expectations!!! I like to pride myself on hearing things out before I respond so I don’t make a fool of myself but you had me convinced!!! So I picked my phone up and texted my wife and told her I’m getting one ASAP no matter what it takes!!!

Then right after that you said you were bullshitting and my stomach sank!!!

I knew I had to text her back and let her know I was wrong!!! I cursed you the entire text as I wrote I was wrong to a woman who thrives on them words alone!!!

After that text I was already a little aggravated I had to send that text you started talking about them using dogs as Guinea pigs and me being a dog lover I was sick and wrote out another text to my wife telling her about them using dogs to send to space trying to get around the “I was wrong” text and after i sent that text you said you were lying again!!!

Goddamn it man!!!

Do you realize the fuel you just gave to my wife???

You got me two time and two times I had to send I was wrong text within a 2 hour time period!!!

You timesucking son of a bitch you really put me behind the 8 ball on this one!!! I will never send another text telling someone something cool until I’ve heard you all the way out!!! Take pride Suck master profit of nimrod you given a woman you’ve never met enough ammunition to blow me apart for like the next few years!!! Keep on sucking and never stop doing what you do!!! Your a Natural born teacher and your show gets me through a lot of boring snow drives!!!

Thank you, Nick! Sorry, not sorry.

I love that I got you with a back-to-back. Sounds like your wife loves it too. Glad you are able to have fun with all this. I’m glad all of this isn’t just fun for me.

Keep on sucking, Nick. Hope I get you again, soon.

4. Next up, super sucker Brian Williams coming in with a new update on an old topic. Brian writes:

Short update on episode 63??

The dyatlov pass incident.

A team of eight unregistered hikers has disappeared. The hikers left on the morning of 2/10/21 to visit the site and pay tribute to the original 9 victims of the 1959 incident.

As of 2/17/21 no one has been found and the case is still open.

Crazy!

That is crazy, Brian! I can’t figure out how legit this recent disappearance is.

Can’t find any recent mainstream press articles on it, but, on Feb. 10th, Newsweek reported:

Eight tourists from Moscow who ventured into the Dyatlov Pass in the Ural region had not returned by Wednesday morning as expected, a local resident told E1.RU.

The source said: "They were supposed to leave at eight o'clock this morning. But they have not returned yet and there is no contact with them."

ALSO - numerous outlets have reported that new research has pointed to an avalanche as the likely culprit behind the original missing hikers.

Not sure that satisfies me, but, there have been a slew of recent articles about that.

Has anyone checked under the Denver Airport for any of the missing hikers?

Can’t hurt, can it?

https://www.newsweek.com/dyatlov-pass-mystery-avalanche- tourists-missing-1568210

5. And finally, Cummin’s Law Commander Chris Schwartze - the original Cummins Law term coiner, got got again. Let’s end on some comedy. Chris writes:

Dear Dan and the Bad Magic Crew,

It is I, Chris the OG Cummin’s Law victim and the guy who coined the term. I was listening the to the latest episode of Is We Dumb and during the junk mail portion of the episode I heard about the guy who referred himself as “Stupid Fucking Idiot” and his run in with Cummins Law.

It makes me smile every time there is a victim because I reminds me that in some small way I was able to help contribute to the Bad Magic Universe. That same day, you got me again dammit and this time it wasn’t on Timesuck or the Secret Suck or even Is We Dumb… no it was Scared to Death. That right, Scared to Death now has a Cummin’s Law Victim and unfortunately it was me.

Let me explain, I was on my way home listening to Scared to Death episode of Corpsewood Manor. In order listen to music in my vehicle, I use a FM Transmitter to works with Bluetooth, which means that when I turn off vehicle, it does not disconnect the Bluetooth.

The other day, I was driving home when my wife called me and asked me to stop at our local Grocery store and pickup food for supper. I pulled into the parking lot and being as I live in a small town, I feel comfortable leaving my vehicle running especially when it is cold outside and since I was running inside quick.

I paused the episode but I did not disconnect the Bluetooth transmitter. I went inside and I was quite evident that it was not going to be a quick trip because everyone and their Grandma decided to shop at the exact same time. So I popped in my Bluetooth earbuds and continued to listen to the episode. When I got up to the register by earbuds stopped working but they were fulling charged. I was struggling to get the sound to come out of them, but nothing was working. Just then it was my time to cash out, so I put the buds back into their case and proceeded with my transaction.

I then left the store and walked to my vehicle, which was blocked from immediate view by a big truck.

I turned the corner to the driver side of the vehicle and that’s where I was met face to face with this middle aged Karen who was listening with an ear turned towards my vehicle.

She saw me and immediately demanded if this was my vehicle.

I replied yeah and that is when I noticed your sweet mouth noises being pumped from my speakers. It was during the time when you were describing the sexual interaction between the couple in the story. She demanded to know what I was listening and why it was talking about sinful pleasure toys and handcuffs, her words not mine.

I tried to explain that I was actually a podcast about scary stories but she didn’t believe me. She started to berate me with a cacophony of rants about the youth of today and how impressionable they are and she claimed that i was listening to some kind of smut audiobook, I tuned most of it out to be honest and that’s when her husband had returned from the store.

She got in the car but not before she aimed a “ you should be ashamed of yourself” look at me.

Needless to say, you probably wont be have another listener but who needs her.

Thanks for everything you do and all the work you put into podcasting. Not Sorry for the long email, 3 out of 5 starts wouldn’t change a thing. Keep up the great work and Hail Nimrod!!!

P.S. If it could be possible, could I get a sweet nick name like “Cummin’s Law Commander” or something. It would mean so much if I got an official nickname from Master Sucker himself.

Keep On Sucking,

Chris Schwartze

Yes, Chris! As you heard, you are now the Cummins Law Commander.

Thanks for starting what has become the source of so many laughs. I love Cummins Law messages. Always make me smile. Sometimes make me literally cry laughing. So many uncomfortable situations.

I hope they continue for many years to come.

Keep laughing everyone.

And get help if you need it! Use the internet for good! Take that step! Why the fuck not?

Hail Nimrod!

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES OUTRO

XII.Goodbye!

A.Goodbye!:

Hope I did okay with my Aussie terms today, Aussie Suckers. I read your emails!

More Bad Productions content throughout the week if you’re interested.

Get some chills with Scared to Death late Tuesday nights.

Get some laughs with Is We Dumb Wednesdays at Noon Pacific Time.

If you have to mow down some emus with a machine gun this week, make sure you have a good reason, and probably don’t try and do it from the back of a truck, and keep on sucking.

PRIMARY SOURCES: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu [ ee-myoo ]_War https://www.thefactsite.com/australian-Emu [ ee-myoo ]-war-facts/ https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/that-time-australia- fought-a-war-against-Emu [ ee-myoo ]s-and-lost/ http://historynuggets.squarespace.com/nuggets/2018/4/21/the-Emu [ ee- myoo ]-war https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/wildlife/2016/10/on-this- day-the-Emu [ ee-myoo ]-war-begin/ https://nomadsworld.com/great-Emu [ ee-myoo ]-war/ https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/the-great-Emu [ ee-myoo ]- war-20160121-gmaz3z.html http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/01/great-Emu [ ee- myoo ]-war-1932/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/the-great-Emu [ ee- myoo ]-war-in-which-some-large-flightless-birds-unwittingly-foiled-the- australian-army/ https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/ridiculous-history-Emu [ ee-myoo ]-war.htm https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/australia-day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ History_of_Australia_(1788%E2%80%931850) https://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries/australia/history https://www.insightguides.com/destinations/asia-pacific/australia/ historical-highlights