Content Writing Prompt: Ivan Carnaby
Australian Ivan Clarence Carnaby was born in 1908 and lived for 66 years. He was a farmer, a botanist, and a naturalist, and he spent a large part of his life observing Emus. Which is somewhat poetic, as Emus in the wild have been observed observing their observers.
Or maybe the Emu War left a lasting impression on Ivan. Yes, there was an Emu War in 1932. Ivan was 24 at the time. War seems an odd term for what happened since, to me, it suggests two sides actively aggressing at one another.
The incident referred to (granted, quite awesomely) as the Emu War was sparked by a dry spell in Western Australia. Scores of Emus swarmed the Chandler and Waloogan regions during a dry spell. And, since Emus are big and strong and absol-fucka-lutely terrifying, they ravaged farmland and rabbit fencing to such a degree that the honest-to-God Australian Army was called in. Which the army did, determining the best way to disperse the Emu horde was to fire machine guns at it. Which they did.
But the Emus won the battle? This is what the Wikipedia article says?
Again, I don’t know how this constituted a war. And I don’t know how the Emus won their war. But maybe Ivan did. And maybe that’s why he spent so much of the rest of his life studying them.
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