I'm a big fan of mankind versus nature stories, in which mankind loses.
This is one of those stories.

It started as a joke. Years ago, Australian-born stand-up Monty Franklin stumbled across an entry on Wikipedia about the Great Emu War. Now all-but-forgotten, the incident refers to a month in 1932 when the Australian government, in an attempt to curb the wild population of emus chomping on farm crops, enlisted a battalion of World War I veterans with machine guns and military training. The result was a decisive victory. For the Emus.

John Cleese has now signed off on making an anti-war satire about the events.

"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."
- Major Meredith (hilarious actual quote from the commanding officer)

"The machine-gunners' dreams of point blank fire into serried masses of Emus were soon dissipated. The Emu 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."
- ornithologist Dominic Serventy (quote from newspaper reporting the war)