Now that the “War Against Drugs” & the “War Against Terror” have been successfully concluded, & before the “War Against Iran” gets going, the US has declared war against the inhabitants of Guam (a US territory in the Pacific). Well OK, it’s only actually declared war on the island’s brown tree snakes, but we’ve all seen what collateral damage looks like after the airforce has dropped in for a visit. Anyway, US wildlife officials plan, during the next few months, to bomb the island with dead baby mice stuffed with a common analgesic that is poisonous to the slithering, tree-huggers.
Brown tree snakes were introduced to Guam during the closing stages of WWII by visiting U.S. military vessels & have become major pests, blamed for wiping out large chunks of native bird populations on the island.
Officials have worried for years that Agriculture Department had been about the only US government department that wasn’t “at war” with somebody or something & selected the snakes (which have no natural predators on Guam) as “low-hanging” fruit; arguing that pre-emptive military action now could save other, friendly Pacific islands. It appears they were referring especially to Hawaii, over 7,500 kilometres (well beyond “slither range” under normal circumstances) to the east, where numerous US voters & purveyors of presidential memorabilia live.
“Guam is a very unique situation,” said William Pitt, a wildlife biologist (who has never understood the meaning of the word pleonasm) at the U.S. Agriculture Department’s National Wildlife Research Center in Hawaii. “There is no other place in the world that has a moslem insurgent snake issue like Guam.”
The project is set to begin with dead newborn mice being dropped by helicopter over heavily forested areas where the snakes are most concentrated.
Stuffed into the mouth of each murdered, infant mouse will be acetaminophen, the active ingredient in several over-the-counter pain-relief compounds, which is toxic to snakes “but not a lot of other animals,” Pitt said. (NB. Small children & the elderly or those suffering from a range of medical conditions may not fall into this “not a lot” category.)
In an attempt to keep the baited dead, infant mice off the ground, each tiny rodent will be attached to a strand of ribbon between pieces of cardboard designed to drop in a loop & catch in the canopy of trees, he said, pointing out that this was significantly cheaper than parachuting-in live mice or SEALs.
The goal of the aerial assault, which will eventually involve the slaughter of around 2,000 mice in all, is not to eradicate but to reduce & control the brown tree snake population on the island, Pitt said.
“Shock & awe” do not begin to cover it….
ThursdayAgain 
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