Navy Bombs Guam With Poisoned Mice
In a glorious culmination of 15 years research, federal scientists bombed the island of Guam with drugged mice sporting cardboard wings and radios. The target: deadly, terrifying snakes, which arrived, in part, via airplane.
The invasive brown tree snake is devouring endangered indigenous species, and the US Department of Agriculture has been researching ways to thwart it (and possibly other snakes) since 1995, according to National Geographic. The current state of the art, just tested, is an army of mouse corpses stuffed with Tylenol — the painkiller is deadly to the tree snakes — and fitted with cardboard wings designed to catch in treetops. Some mice have radio transmitters so scientists can tell if they've been eaten. The mice are then dropped into the jungle from helicopters, namely those of belonging to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 25, like the model pictured above. There's a paper on the technique (PDF) here, which notes how the predatory snakes must be stopped because they are very good at hopping from island to island on ships and on mother$%^#ing planes.
The body count from the test bombing run is not yet in. If, somehow, this plan of gluing cardboard wings to frozen and then thawed and then refrozen and rethawed mice does not work out, we suggest some sort of awesome guidance system. There are no doubt teenage boys across America who would be happy to contribute free research.
