The U.S. military is going to bomb Guam. To kill some of the 2 million brown tree snakes. The bombs are made of dead baby mice. The Australian reports:
The strategy takes advantage of the snake’s two big weaknesses. Unlike most snakes, brown tree snakes are happy to eat prey they didn’t kill themselves, and they are highly vulnerable to acetaminophen….
The upcoming mice drop is targeted to hit snakes near Guam’s sprawling Andersen Air Force Base, which is surrounded by heavy foliage.
Using helicopters, the dead neonatal mice will be dropped by hand, one by one.
I hope the Pentagon names this “Operation St. Patrick.”
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UPDATE, 2/26 at 9:26 AM: This post originally included a quote from the Australian that acetaminophen is “harmless to humans.” A concerned reader, an MD, wrote me to warn that this was not true — it can kill you if you take too much, and it does kill people. A medical journal article last decade found:
Acetaminophen overdose is the leading cause for calls to Poison Control Centers (>100,000/year) and accounts for more than 56,000 emergency room visits, 2,600 hospitalizations, and an estimated 458 deaths due to acute liver failure each year. Data from the U.S. Acute Liver Failure Study Group registry of more than 700 patients with acute liver failure across the United States implicates acetaminophen poisoning in nearly 50% of all acute liver failure in this country.
