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In a desperate bid to deoxidize Guam ’s population of poisonous brown tree snake , officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture think they ’ve hit on a foolproof programme : air - drop dead computer mouse onto the Pacific island .
It gets weirder : Before the airdrop , the deadened mice will have their bodies stuffed with Tylenol ( acetaminophen ) , which is toxic to the snakes , agree to theGuardian .
The brown tree snake is proving difficult to eradicate from Guam.
Wait — it gets uncanny still . Each mouse will be match with a bantam chute so they ’ll be more likely to get snag in tree diagram where the serpent dwell . That will also reduce the risk that the all in mice will poison other brute .
Thebrown tree Snake River , a indigene of Australia , Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands , hitch a ride to Guam on military transport ship concisely after World War II . Though poisonous , the invasive specie ’s venom is n’t lethal to humans .
But the snakes have wreaked mayhem on the ecosystem of Guam , decimating the island ’s native bird universe . Within a few yr of the encroaching species reaching , 10 of Guam ’s 12 native bird species had been pass over out .
And as a result of the launch bird population , Guam is now overrun with up to 40 meter morespidersthan nearby Pacific island . to boot , the brown tree snake , which can reach 10 foot ( 3 metre ) in length , have the inauspicious habit of mount onto electric pole and causing far-flung power outage , according to the Associated Press .
Controlling trespassing animal population has always been a tricky problem . When rats were by chance introduced to Hawaii , the rodent apace became pests since they had no natural predators . So shekels - cane plantation owner brought over a group ofmongoosesto hold the rat population .
But nobody knew that the mongoose generally hunts during the daylight , and rat are primarily nocturnal , according to theNew York Times . So while the crumb population preserve to soar , the mongooses proceeded to destroy Hawaii ’s native bird and turtle population .
The poisonous substance - mouse caper has been used before in Guam : In 2010 , the USDA air - drip mouse at military installation on the island , allot toCNN.com . That program ’s strength conduct to the current airdrop program , which will be restrain to Guam ’s Andersen Air Force Base .
