YES, I AM STILL HERE peeking out my window on Main Street, and if there is one thing we humans should have learned by now it is: It’s not smart to mess with Mother Nature.” Remember the clever margarine commercial on TV that claimed the product was so good it could fool Mother Nature?
Thunder and lightning followed, and she warned “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”
I recently saw an article about a remote place named Marion Island. It’s located in the Indian Ocean between South Africa and Antarctica.
Let’s bomb lovely Marion!
Poor little Marion Island is about to get bombed in a big way. The reason for the bombing is to get rid of the jillions of mice which have flourished there since a couple of them escaped off a sailing vessel back when there were sailing vessels.
The mice had no enemies. At first they ate seabird eggs, but then learned to eat baby albatross chicks alive. Then they learned to climb aboard the adult albatrosses and eat them alive. The big birds didn’t know how to defend themselves since they spend much of their existence waaaay out over the ocean and far away from those danged mice.
The human solution seems so simple.
According to an article in LiveScience, “The Mouse-Free Marion Project, a collaboration between the South African government and BirdLife South Africa, is trying to raise $29 million to drop 660 tons (600 metric tons) of rodenticide-laced pellets onto the island in winter 2027.”
The pellets won’t affect other animals living on the island because they don’t eat stuff like those pellets, conservationists explain.
The pellet bombs will be dropped by helicopters in winter when the mice are most hungry. The goal of the conservationists is simple: Kill every doggone mouse on Marion Island.
“We have to get rid of every last mouse,” Mark Anderson, CEO of BirdLife South Africa, says. “If there was a male and female remaining, they could breed and eventually get back to where we are now.”
Yes, that is the mouse way. Breeding and eating eating albattrosses.
But wait! Act in haste, repent in leisure I recently warned you.
We humans have tried once before to get rid of the mice of Marion Island. In the late 1940s, researchers were alarmed at the proliferation of mice, so they wisely set loose about a half-dozen cats which quickly produced hordes of feral cats.
Instead of eating the mice, the cats developed a taste for albatrosses and other seabirds. In fact, the article said that the cats were killing almost a half-million seabirds EACH YEAR! (Emphasis mine)
The cats were somehow eradicated (the article doesn’t say how), and that led Marion Island to once again become Heaven-on-Earth for those darling hungry mice.
The bombing should not affect other living things which naturally occur on the island because Marion Island’s native invertebrates and the seabirds usually feed at sea. They won’t eat the pellets.
The conservationists promise.
I asked Nashville’s Unofficial Downtown J-Turn Enforcement Officer about this and he said that the seabirds will probably develop a taste for poison pellets.
He also quietly advised that the #1 Fair Weather Razorback Football Fan should not get his hopes up after that stirring victory over UAPB.
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ANIMAL CRACKERS. See above.
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THEY’RE STILL IN SPACE. In the past seven weeks in this column I’ve mentioned the astronauts that are stranded in space because everyone is a bit nervous about their safe return to Earth in that jiggly spacecraft.
I hope the astronauts have guardian angels.
They were launched June 5 and were supposed to return home eight days later.
The way things are going, NASA says it may be 2025 before the civilian spaceman and spacewoman can come back to earth.
Thank godness NASA has determined that the astronauts are NOT coming back in a Boeing-made spacecraft.
That rickety Boeing Starliner spacecraft is going to return to Earth without the astronauts.
I wonder if we’ll witness the thing fly apart under the stress of re-entry.
I think the top Boeing executives should be stripped naked, covered with peanut butter and marooned on Marion Island.
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THINGS I LEARNED from opening e-mail: Once upon a time there was a King who was only 12 inches tall. He was a terrible King but he made a great ruler.
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WORD GAMES. Another set of close cousins: Straighten Up and Fly Right. Often heard with: “I’m not going to tell you again!”
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HE SAID: “The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds and to advance the kind of science, math and technology education that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel.” John Glenn; senator, Marine and astronaut
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SHE SAID: “As an immigrant, I appreciate, far more than the average American, the liberties we have in this country. Silence is a big enemy of morality. I don’t want our blunders in history to get repeated.” Gloria Estefan; vocalist, musician and Cuban immigrant
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
