Parachute assault into Guam
TSO sent us a link from WebProNews which reports that government forces have parachuted into Guam. An entire brigade, by the looks of it;
It was an odd site in Guam on Sunday, as two thousand mice floated down from the sky on tiny cardboard and tissue paper parachutes. Why were mice flying through the air? They were dropped from a plane over the Andersen Air Force Base in the United States territory of Guam on a mission to kill the brown tree snakes that have invaded the country.
The mice were already dead before being dumped, and had been pumped full of 80 mg of acetaminophen. An $8 million United States program was approved in February to help eradicate the snakes and save the wild life and exotic birds that have become the snake’s favorite snack. Sunday’s drop marked the fourth rodent air assault, and the biggest so far.
Of course, the brown tree snake invasion of Guam began under the Clinton regime and the Bush administration completely ignored the problem – so it stands to reason that the Obama Administration would take the bull by the horns and commit troops to the war.
Category: Who knows
I think the brown snake problem predates Clinton and goes back to right after WWII when they stowed away on ships moving cargo among the various Pacific islands. From what I’ve read and seen on Discovery Channel, they’ve been a problem for quite awhile with local birds (a real Silent Spring, so to speak) and knocking out power. I seem to recall reading many years ago that the species is now present here in Texas, having arrived in returning household goods shipments from Guam. Given all that, good luck with the control effort. I think we have a few more predators here than Guam.
Evidently, the brown snake was seen here in Texas (thought it was Houston, not Corpus Christi), but to establish itself.
Damn, forgot the cite:
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/cerc/danoff-burg/invasion_bio/inv_spp_summ/boiga_irregularis.html
Snakes, beware! Mighty Mouse to the rescue!!!!
They are a HUGE problem there. Even when I was there 20 years ago there were big programs to eradicate them, all without success.
While they’re not poisonous, the can bite, and can cause serious problems to small children and pets if they’re bitten. They’ve also decimated the bird population to the point where what few birds are left will so fiercely defend their nests they’ll dive bomb ANYTHING, including people, who get too close. Case in point–when we ran on Site III, a lot of the guys would take badminton rackets with them to swipe at the diving birds.
One contest I remember was a giveaway for a new truck to whoever brought in the most LIVE brown tree snakes. The winner brought in something like over 25,000 of the little bastards.
CC Senior: according to Wikipedia, the introduction of the brown tree snake to Guam occurred sometime between the end of World War II and 1952. Looks like Harry Truman gets the blame for that one vice Clinton. (smile)
Chair Force mice ?
Should have sent in mongoose trapped from Hawaii.
They should send in Mongoose trapped in Hawaii.
They should just trap mongoose from Hawaii and use them.
Racists!
Plus, must be Bush’s fault somehow.
Also… if they are already dead, they don’t need parachutes…
@8,9,10-That would create all sorts of new problems. Somehow, I don’t think them mongooses will be leaving the birds and their eggs alone, either. With the possible exception of camels in Australia, introducing animals to a place has never had anything but massive detrimental effects on the area in question. Birth control is an effective method that has been used in the past to eliminate introduced animal populations. If we can put money into figuring out a formula that will work on brown snakes, plus more poisoned mouse campaigns, plus a bounty on dead snakes like what’s been tried before, we can probably get them down to a reasonable level. Eliminating them completely is probably unrealistic at this point, but we can definitely lessen up the pressure on those birds. All of this depends, of course, on federal money being authorized, which the gov probably won’t. Maybe, though.
One question… If the mice were dead, why use tiny little parachutes? Don’t snakes like mice tartar?
Silver cheese upon their chest
These are mice, America’s best
Two thousand strong they float and fall
To deliver Tylenol
ROFTL! #14 Bubblehead Ray, thank you for a much needed laugh.
You owe me a keyboard, Ray.
2000…that’s a lot of mice. Hope the island doesn’t tip over.
Claymore and Ray owe me a new keyboard.
Congratulations on your success, Brain.
And call me crazy, but animals (like snakes) aren’t real fond of dead food.
“The mice were already dead before being dumped, and had been pumped full of 80 mg of acetaminophen”
Can’t believe I’m the first to say it but:
“DEATH FROM ABOVE!” 😀
BTW, if they’re dead when they hit the DZ, should we pin their wings upon thier chest/and bury them in the leaning rest?
I was wondering the same thing – will a snake eat a dead mouse? And then it has to swallow the parachute? Or maybe the dead mouse “cuts away” at the last moment? Yeah, that’s the ticket, tiny little explosive charges that blow away the harness moments before impact. Nothing about this story makes sense.
OK … I am not the smartest guy on the payroll here at the blue collar factory making wigdets, unedumicated without a degree … but how do you train a dead poisoned mouse to do a PLF?
Just askin’?
@ HS Guy … Geeze Us Crips … Your starting to sound like Hondo!
Finally, this little tidbit got me thinking as well:
and had been pumped full of 80 mg of acetaminophen
For those unfamiliar, that’s 1/4 of a regular-strength Tylenol (325 mg), or about 1/6 the size of an extra-strength one (500 mg), so how do you justify $8 MILLION on this?
Me, give me a few thousand mice, I’ll stuff a half of a pill down their little throats, chuck ’em out in the boonies, and take, say, only $2 million.
Total cost, couple of bottles of Tylenol–about $40.
🙂
OK Guys … You want parachuting mice … Here you go!
I’m not sure this will work. Every snake I’ve ever known preferred live food. Pet snakes can be coaxed to eat dead mice, but those are an exception. That acetaminophen will probably work really well on anything else that eats those mice, though.
@26 Do you know how hard it is to work the tiny sewing machines that make mouse parachutes? Those Chinese kids running them are usually the runts of the litter and they’re getting harder to come by these days….plus packing 2000 chutes with tiny static lines, and 8000 tiny jump boots, that sh1t gets expensive really quickly…
Perhaps all that $$ was to fund the various study committees, planners, and peer review groups? Those get very expensive, what with all the travel, hotels etc. They probably had to visit the Sydney Opera House, the Great Wall of China, maybe even the Galapagos a few times to gain a complete understanding of all the issues.
But first, there was the Committee to select the committee, set parameters, and establish the Scheduling Committee. And purchase all the hardware they would need to interface with whoever needed interfacing.
@30: The parachutes were nothing, it was the 2,000 little tiny maroon berets that were the tough part. Fortunately, Shinseki hooked them up with a Chinese contractor who could produce them in bulk.
The question remains, though, what mouse unit was this? 501st (Geroni-Mice?) 504th (Cheese-Hold?) 505th (H-Mice?)
I can do this all day. 😀
Sorta gives new meaning to the term mousetrap, doesn’t it?
For those wondering about whether the snakes will eat dead mice, I read recently on Wikipedia when researching American vipers, that cottonmouths have been observed to eat carrion, usually marine fauna but up to and including the remains of feral pigs.
@ 33 Poetrooper … well thanks for that grizzley description just before dinner time …