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It is twenty-five years since I visited Guam, though I can’t say that I saw much more of it than the quay to which the ship I happened to be on was tethered.
I did wander ashore in the morning and walked along the quayside to visit a Japanese cruise ship for a couple of hours. Afterwards, I recall taking a shady seat on the quay and having a cigarette while watching the Japanese ship sail. Had I known that Guam was infested with brown tree snakes, I might not have done that.
It seems that brown tree snakes were introduced to the otherwise snake-free island as stowaways from a cargo ship that called there in the 1940s. The invasive snakes quickly multiplied and are responsible for killing off many of the island’s native birds, lizards and fruit bats as well as causing major power outages when they coil themselves around power lines.
This piece of information comes to light with the bizarre news that the US Navy are planning to ‘bomb’ the island with frozen dead mice stuffed with paracetamol, a chemical that is poisonous to the snakes. Even more bizarrely, the plan is to attach cardboard wings and green streamers to the dead mice, dropping them from helicopters and letting them float down to catch on the tree branches where the snakes will find them while, at the same time, avoiding poisoning other jungle-floor creatures.
I’m not keen on snakes and wish the US Navy well with their plan.
But I shudder to think I might have had one of these critters fall on my head that hot day I sat in the shade of Guam and watched a ship sail!
,.
It is twenty-five years since I visited Guam, though I can’t say that I saw much more of it than the quay to which the ship I happened to be on was tethered.
I did wander ashore in the morning and walked along the quayside to visit a Japanese cruise ship for a couple of hours. Afterwards, I recall taking a shady seat on the quay and having a cigarette while watching the Japanese ship sail. Had I known that Guam was infested with brown tree snakes, I might not have done that.
It seems that brown tree snakes were introduced to the otherwise snake-free island as stowaways from a cargo ship that called there in the 1940s. The invasive snakes quickly multiplied and are responsible for killing off many of the island’s native birds, lizards and fruit bats as well as causing major power outages when they coil themselves around power lines.
This piece of information comes to light with the bizarre news that the US Navy are planning to ‘bomb’ the island with frozen dead mice stuffed with paracetamol, a chemical that is poisonous to the snakes. Even more bizarrely, the plan is to attach cardboard wings and green streamers to the dead mice, dropping them from helicopters and letting them float down to catch on the tree branches where the snakes will find them while, at the same time, avoiding poisoning other jungle-floor creatures.
I’m not keen on snakes and wish the US Navy well with their plan.
But I shudder to think I might have had one of these critters fall on my head that hot day I sat in the shade of Guam and watched a ship sail!
,.
