Today we did something that I have wanted to do since coming to Guam: visit the USDA facility here at Andersen Air Force Base!!! This may seem like an odd thing to be excited about, but if you, like me, have a passionate excitement about and extreme hatred for non-native invasive species, it's natural. (I wrote a bit about this
here, and
here.)
So today we walked with our friends up to the USDA. The people there were so nice and accommodating. They spoke with us for a long time about how many snakes they catch, how they catch them, and about the effects the snakes have had on the other animals here. Then they took us to the "snake pits".
They separate the snakes into different cages based on the week during which they are caught. Then they use the freshest snakes to help train the jack russell terriers that are the last line of defense to keep the snakes from leaving the island. The dogs sniff everything slated to leave Guam, at the airports, port, cargo shipping places, even people's house hold goods before they get packed out to move. I guess the snakes odor changes as they are kept in the cage, so the dogs only use them for a week. It would be devastating to the other islands if this snake showed up anywhere else. There weren't many snakes today, because the USDA people only worked yesterday and today because of the holiday.
Here is one of the traps, which catch most of the snakes. The mouse is kept safe and happy in the middle part. The USDA guys make mouse food by molding chicken feed with paraffin wax into muffin tins. The potato is how the mouse gets its water. The mouse lures the snake in, and the snake hangs out until it is transferred to the cages here. After two weeks, they get euthanized. The facility there also has the big cages of cute fat little mice waiting to get switched into the traps all over base. The USDA traps snakes at our base, the Navy base, the Guam airport, and at the port. One thing I learned about today that I found disturbing: they
only try to control snakes at those places... I always thought (at least since B talked me into coming to Guam by telling me this) that the brown tree snake was sort of on the run, and not really an issue anymore. But there are over
THREE MILLION snakes on the island, and they don't even try to trap them anywhere except where they might get on a plane or a boat to leave Guam. That was discouraging to hear... They do catch over 13,000 a year, but compared with the vast number that's slithering around the rest of this place, that isn't much comfort. I asked about any plans for eradication attempts, and he said none were in the works. About a year ago, they did a helicopter drop of mice injected with tylenol, since that is lethal to the snakes, in hopes that the snakes would eat the treated mice. He said that if any large scale control attempts were made, it would be from the air like that.
They keep a big cage with three of the "big" tree snakes, to use for demonstrations. They got one of these out for us to see. It was a little over six feet long. He said that they once caught four ten footers in one cage, and those were the largest he has seen. Most of the ones they catch are three to four feet.
He held it up,
and everyone got to pet it. Here is Miss H.
He showed us that the snakes' belly is reflective, so one of the most effective ways of catching the snake is spotlighting them at night. They drive with lights where they can see the fence surrounding the base and see tons of the snakes climbing the fence.
Miss A got her arm all wound up with snake. We learned how they brown tree snake is semi-venomous and semi-constrictive...
He wanted to show us the snake's fangs, so he had it bite its tail. Kind of sad... But freaky looking mouth!
The kids had really got the snakes in the little cage awake and riled up, so they were striking at the wire, getting their fangs caught, pretty intense. I couldn't get my camera to focus through the wire mesh, so the guy opened the top of the cage for me. But the snakes didn't really like that so much, and one of them- up in the right corner- was striking at me, so I backed off... Interestingly, he said that they have noticed that the tiger striped ones, like that one standing up to get me, seem to be more aggressive than the solid ones. Then, once I pulled back, the guy pulled a whole bunch of snakes out from under the top frame of the cage, right where I had been leaning over. It freaked me out. And I decided I had enough snakes for one day. I can guess who will star in my nightmares tonight... It was awesome.
