澳大利亚败给鸸鹋的战争

曾经有一支军队,败给了鸟。一九三二年年底,西澳大利亚的小麦农户发现自己的庄稼正遭受鸸鹋的侵袭,这种高大、不会飞的鸟成千上万地涌入这片地区寻找水源,结果发现的却是大片的谷物。

An army once lost to birds. In the closing months of nineteen thirty-two, wheat farmers in Western Australia found their crop under assault from emus, tall flightless birds that had descended on the region in their thousands in search of water and discovered fields of grain instead.

农户们向政府求援,政府随即派出了士兵,配备了两挺机枪和一万发子弹。纸面上看,这场战斗毫无悬念。到了田野里,事情的发展却大不相同。鸸鹋奔跑速度相当快,转弯灵活,极难被拦停,最初几轮扫射过后,鸟群就分散成一个个灵活的小队,继续前进。机枪多次卡壳。一辆卡车也被征用上阵,却发现地形太过崎岖,根本无法瞄准。

The farmers appealed to the government, which dispatched soldiers armed with two machine guns and ten thousand rounds of ammunition. On paper it looked like no contest. In the fields, matters unfolded rather differently. Emus run at considerable speed, turn sharply, and require a great deal of stopping, and after the opening bursts of fire the flocks scattered into small, mobile groups and carried on. The guns jammed repeatedly. A truck was pressed into service, only for the terrain to prove far too rough to aim from.

大约一个月后,士兵们撤退了。在数量远超此数的鸸鹋种群中,只有不到一千只被击毙,世界各地的报纸都借着这个故事好好热闹了一番,而那些鸸鹋,根本不知道有人已经向它们宣战,又继续回去吃小麦了。

After roughly a month, the soldiers withdrew. Fewer than a thousand birds had been killed out of a population many times that size, newspapers across the world had an enjoyable time with the story, and the emus, unaware that war had been declared upon them, returned to eating the wheat.