The Mouse That Snored
Drugged parachuting mice go for the kill versus the brown snakes
They floated down from the sky Sunday – 2,000 mice, wafting on tiny cardboard parachutes over Andersen Air Force Base in the U.S. territory of Guam.
But the rodent commandos didn’t know they were on a mission: to help eradicate the brown tree snake, an invasive species that has caused millions of dollars in wildlife and commercial losses since it arrived a few decades ago.
That’s because they were dead. And pumped full of painkillers.
… But brown tree snakes have an Achilles’ heel: Tylenol.
For some reason, the snakes are almost uniquely sensitive to acetaminophen, the active ingredient in the ubiquitous over-the-counter painkiller. If you can get a tree snake to eat just 80 milligrams, you can kill it. That’s only about one-sixth of a standard pill – pigs, dogs and other similarly sized animals would have to eat about 500 of them to get into any trouble.
Sounds like the plot of a bad Donald Sutherland movie from the 60s.
Fun | Mr. Bingley | 
December 3, 2013 5:34 pm
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From the comments:
“If the mice are already dead, why the parachutes?”
Wonder if it will even work. I like snakes; I’ve had snakes as pets. They seem to prefer (strongly) live prey.
Thanks for the info. The reports say many native birds are extinct, or nearly extinct due to the infestation of the tree snake. The question is: Why
did the authorities wait so long
to attack the problem? Isn’t like draining the swamp after your up to your ass in alligators?
Proving, once again, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
The biggest tree snake of them all is currently in the Whitehouse. I wonder…..
Yeah – but he doesn’t eat mice. He eats Republicans and Libertarians.