In 1932, Australian farmers had a problem: A gigantic flock of birds had migrated into their land and were obliterating their wheat crops. And this being Australia, these particular birds were unlikely to be intimidated by a dude made of straw and old clothes.
They were emus: Flightless, 6-foot-tall eating machines that had decided to take over the local farmlands. And there were 20,000 of them. The situation quickly escalated to the point where you could barely see the fields from scores of Big Birds lounging around.
To solver this, farmers brought in soldiers with machine guns. Three soldiers made their way to the Western Australia with a pair of machine guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition in tow. The goal was simple: Find the emus, open fire, eradicate them en masse, and declare victory.
But the plan went awry as the emus dispersed into small groups, effectively neutralizing the machine guns’ ability to kill multiple birds in a single outing. After killing only 50 to 300 emus, the soldiers withdrew and regrouped.
A few weeks later, they were more successful, totaling roughly 1,000 slaughtered emus, but not successful enough.