Let this be a warning to Guam's brown tree snakes—watch what you eat.
As part of its ongoing battle with invasive reptiles, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is dropping dead mice laced with acetaminophen—the generic equivalent of Tylenol—into the jungles of Guam, according to CNN.
After years of research, the USDA discovered that acetaminophen was a deadly poison to snakes in small doses. The Environmental Protection Agency eventually approved its use in Guam.
“The discovery that snakes will die when they eat acetaminophen was a huge step forward,” Anne Brooke, conservation resources program manager for Naval Facilities Command Marianas, told Stars and Stripes. “The problem was how you get the snakes to eat it.”
The answer is to hide the drug inside dead rodents, and parachute them into the habitat.
Officlals are attaching the tainted mice to "two pieces of cardboard joined by paper streamers that snake exterminators hope will catch on tree branches, providing deadly snacks for snakes at those heights," reports Stars and Stripes.
The brown tree snake, which arrived on the island sometime during World War II, probably on an ocean freighter, has run roughshod since disembarking.
Brooks told Stars and Stripes that by the 1980s the species had “eaten its way from one end of the island to the other,” eliminating most native birds. Power lines were also destroyed, costing Guam's power authority millions of dollars in damages.
The Tylenol-dosed dead mice were employed after other strategies, including traps, proved ineffective.
www.takepart.com/news/2010/09/16/tylenol-laced-dead-mice-kill-guams-invasive-brown-tree-snakes
