Random Thought of the Day

Guam.

I recently educated myself about the interesting plight of Guam. This little island in Micronesia (it's actually petty large) is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States. That means it has it's own area code. I mean, really? Think about this for a second; Guam is on the other side of the international date-line. But you can call it toll-free from most landlines... (the area code is 671, btw). If I called Guam right now, it is about 7:00am on SATURDAY MORNING! That's tomorrow!!! Frankly, I'm a mildly appalled but mostly amused at all of the US's unincorporated territories. It seems very silly.

But I digress.

The real reason I wanted to tell you about Guam has to do with a good friend of mine who just spent her whole summer there. I had never really heard anything about Guam before I was first educated by mi amiga, Eleanor. Guam used to be home to a great diversity of birds. But then, in WWII, the US military introduced the brown treesnake to the island. Now Guam has no birds, but has the highest density of snakes in the world.

Here's a picture of Eleanor holding one of the world's LAST Guam Rails.

The majority of Guam's endemic species are now critically endangered or extinct. So sad.

In attempts to improve the plight of Guam's endemics, officials on the island have concocted a PLAN!

Get some dead mice. Stuff them with Tylenol, tie them to cardboard, add some streamers, and drop them from helicopters!

Oh good. Thank goodness someone came up with that idea. The island is saved!

But really, this might actually be a good idea even though it sounds completely absurd. As it turns out, the brown treesnake can not ingest acetaminophen. It's toxic to them. So, the hope is that these hungry little snakes will eat the dead, pill-stuffed mice and then die. Hopefully.

They're trying out this interesting method of snake-control on some small areas of forest first. If these experiments work, they might start dropping dead mice all over the island. The people of Guam really hate these snakes.

You can read the whole article here!