![canstockphoto1012305.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/internutter/23tbkNx8yeXK7ZAitNqS13tqT1PwZYuXBTpL12m1xwHGsfC5EKHBaXz99dv4J9vx8giip.jpg)

> A tour group of several havenworlders, other galactics, and a few deathworlders were visiting an Emu farm and getting to pet the birds which were quite happily pecking pellets from open hands, visiting the young chicks, and seeing the hatchery. Then the humans grin, as a galactic mentions how gentle these birds are, and the humans tell of the Emu War, where these birds actually defeated the humans who want to war with them.
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War) -- [DaniAndShali](https://www.internutter.org/bb/user/daniandshali)

[AN: Gotta love final tallies like "Losses: 10K rounds, Dignity"]

Seeing birds like these, it was easy to believe that dinosaurs still existed. In a way, they did. They were just called 'birds' now. These ones were both impressive and tame. Their bulk was mostly in their legs and abdomens, and the rest of them were either lanky or covered in limp, stringy feathers.

Havenworlders could offer them food, and would not get harmed in the process. Then, they would learn that these gawky, unlikely beasts with brains no bigger than a walnut had once won a war against the Humans they shared a planet with. It had started, as most Deathworlder things did, with a war. A big one, with plenty of returning population that needed housing and occupation unrelated to killing people.

In those times, they needed food, and Australia had plenty of land worth farming. All went well until a drought forced the Emus to seek out greener pastures... like the crops growing under Human care. Military minds implemented military solutions and things went bad from worse.

Deathworlders from the _most_ Deathworld part of the planet were tougher than many more ordinary obstacles. They had evolved to run away from anything Human-shaped, startle at anything unfamiliar, and were generally agreed to be tougher than a vault's worth of old boots.

In the end, the thing that ended the war was not military might, but smarter minds inventing better fences, thereby keeping the birds out of the crop fields.

It was some decades later that Australians realised that Emus could be tamed and then farmed with relative ease. Now? Australians _ate_ the birds that once threatened their food security.

On Deathworlds, they learned, it's never a question of survival of the smartest. Sometimes, it's all about survival of the most obstinate.

[Image <a href="https://www.canstockphoto.com">(c) Can Stock Photo / mb_fotos</a>]

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