Cold Blooded

Two thousand mice dropped on Guam by parachute — to kill snakes

 

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/02/21724382-two-thousand-mice-dropped-on-guam-by-parachute-to-kill-snakes?lite

 

"The process is quite simple," Dan Vice, the Agriculture Department's assistant supervisory wildlife biologist for Guam, told KUAM.

Helicopters make low-altitude flights over the base's forested areas, dropping their furry bundles on a timed sequence. Each mouse is laced with the deadly microdose of acetaminophen and strung up to two pieces of cardboard and green tissue paper.

"The cardboard is heavier than the tissue paper and opens up in an inverted horseshoe," Vice said. "It then floats down and ultimately hangs up in the forest canopy. Once it's hung in the forest canopy, snakes have an opportunity to consume the bait."

200) so trussed up mice were dropped over Guam to kill off some of the Brown Snakes that infest the small island. Like Typhoid Mary, they are carriers of a substance that can kill the snakes in very small doses - ASA - ordinary acetaminophen.

But brown tree snakes have an Achilles' heel: Tylenol.

For some reason, the snakes are almost uniquely sensitive to acetaminophen, the active ingredient in the ubiquitous over-the-counter painkiller. If you can get a tree snake to eat just 80 milligrams, you can kill it. That's only about one-sixth of a standard pill — pigs, dogs and other similarly sized animals would have to eat about 500 of them to get into any trouble.

Just sucks for the mice who have to wait in the trees to be eaten. I wonder if they talk to each other while they are waiting because clearly they are meant to be alive when they hit the canopy or the ground. They are just not meant to have a fighting chance once they do that. This is like the mouse version of The Running Man, the Running Mouse. Make it to the sea while ever snake on the island is hunting you.

I have no problem with killing off a few snakes. I mean come one, they are SNAKES. And lets be honest, a few mice dying for science and my entertainment is never a bad thing. There are always LOTS of mice around. Well not in my neighborhood because predators keep them away and I don't live like a pig. But that is besides the point.

I would just like the mice to have a fighting chance. I mean they are in a new neighborhood, they don't know anyone except maybe the mouse he fell next to him and there he is all tied up like some lamb to the slaughter. Give him a weapon and let the poor mouse at least defend himself. I know he already technically IS  a weapon but a poor little biological weapon who has to DIE to be activated. It's both bloody brilliant and bloody evil all at the same time. Those are the schemes that send my mind racing. Next it will be Ebola infected mice in a major world city.

So watch the skies for mice wearing parachutes.