Odds and Ends
24 08 2009Getting Those Damn Rats Out of Alaska
No, not those kind of rats. And not really the whole state…but still, it’s a victory. I’m talking about actual four-legged, snaggle-toothed, beady-eyed, bird-killin’ varmints. The ignominiously named “Rat Island” appears to now be completely rat free. I’ve been following this story for a while, so I was glad to hear that the latest news was good. The down side to the rat eradication is that the poisoned pellets used to kill them also killed gulls and bald eagles in the process.
Since Rat Island has been infested with rats for 230 years, it’s difficult to know exactly what its ecosystem was like before the rodent invasion. With no trees for nesting, and no other land-based mammals, the unwelcome rat refugees ate their way through the eggs and chicks of the ground-nesting seabirds.
Neighboring rat-free islands in the Aleutians have a more abundant and diverse seabird population, said Vernon Byrd, a senior biologist at the refuge. Those other islands have about a half-dozen more types of burrow-nesting seabirds, including horned puffins, Leach’s storm petrels and whiskered auklets.
Rats, particularly those of the Norway variety, have invaded an estimated 90 percent of islands worldwide. They may be responsible for an estimated 40 percent to 60 percent of all recorded bird and reptile extinctions on islands, according to Island Conservation, a California-based group that partnered with The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to rid Rat Island of its namesake inhabitants.
Vernon Byrd? That’s almost poetic. All we need is a biologist with a competing view named Maynard Ratt, and we’d have a children’s book. Now about those other rats…
What Else??
OK, Alaska’s got earthquakes, volcanoes, melting ice, endangered polar bears, coastal erosion, collapsing fisheries, and now this.
Now, a marine scientist says the state’s marine waters are turning acidic from absorbing greenhouse gases faster than tropical waters, potentially endangering Alaska’s $4.6 billion fishing industry.The same things that make Alaska’s marine waters among the most productive in the world — cold, shallow depths and abundant marine life — make them the most vulnerable to acidification, said Jeremy Mathis, a chemical oceanographer at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
“Ecosystems in Alaska are going to take a hit from ocean acidification,” he said. “Right now, we don’t know how they are going to respond.”
Great.
Escape from the Mudflats!
Before Ocean Depression really sinks in, there’s actually an endangered ocean animal stranded on the mudflats story with a happy ending!
About 20 beluga whales that became stranded in mud during a low tide over the weekend have apparently freed themselves, bringing relief to biologists who have been closely monitoring their plight.
“We saw a lot of alive belugas but we did not see any dead, floating or beached whales,” said Barbara Mahoney, a National Marine Fisheries Service biologist who went looking for the whales Monday morning.
The whales were spotted by a pilot Saturday afternoon wallowing in a large mud hole. They were spotted again, still stuck, a couple of hours later.
Pictures taken on Saturday indicated the whales dug a hole in the mud when they got stranded on mud flats off the Birchwood area north of Anchorage, Mahoney said. All the whales were in the mud hole, except one that was lying on hard mud.
The stranding occurred during an abnormally low tide. Mahoney thinks the whales were likely stuck for several hours or more.
Mahoney said it looks like the whales wiggled around in the mud before all the water was gone and were able to create a small pool for themselves. The water helps keep the animals cool, she said.
Oh, Dear God…
Yes, Palinbots….all this can be yours. For a mere $549, you can have Sarah Palin’s face plastered on your…posterior. As you walk, her eyes will alternately wink when the folds of the jeans… oh, never mind. You can read HERE for all the details.
Just a note of warning. If you do decide to part with the cash and pick yourself up a pair of these, do not be surprised if you acquire a following of little waddling over-50 conservative men who trail behind you like ducklings. So, if you’re into that, this may work for you.
A New Possibility for 2012???
What could possibly be more horrifying than Palin jeans? Palin – Prejean, of course. It seems as though the vapid beauty queen has an interest in politics, and so does the former Miss California.
“I don’t need to be Miss USA. I’m not going to little ribbon cuttings and things that aren’t meaningful to me,” she said. Prejean, who was the first runner-up at the 2008 Miss USA pageant, was later stripped of her state crown for reportedly failing to attend officially sanctioned Miss California USA events. Whatever God’s plan for Carrie Prejean may be, it apparently is politically focused. “I definitely have a high interest in politics,” she said on Saturday. “I love Sarah Palin. I think she’s amazing.”
Apparently that “I don’t need a title” thing appealed to her too.
August 25th, 2009 at 6:03 AM
Rat eats poison, eagle eats rat (and gull eats just about anything, including poisoned rat-stuffed eagle)…
I wonder whether the poison used will get into the soil/groundwater?
August 25th, 2009 at 6:09 AM
I can’t imagine that even Sarah herself could be pleased with those jeans! But in her case, I guess you never know.
August 25th, 2009 at 6:12 AM
It’s really a no brainer. There was a lot of freeway work in our city & we had a bit of a rat envasion. Couldn’t use bait bause of all the other critters. There are alternatives. Weird that they let the problem get so bad in the first place. Vibration & sound can drive them away. Surely they could have come up with something else.
August 25th, 2009 at 6:40 AM
@phoebe: It’s an island. There is nowhere to drive them to.
August 25th, 2009 at 6:56 AM
*************** hey! mona lisa is my name*******yes it probably will get into the soil and ground water but ‘the rats will be gone’ as well as every other living critter but there will no more rats on RAT ISLAND…. please pm me. miri sent photos of you and they are gorgeous…b
August 25th, 2009 at 7:17 AM
bubbles – How do I pm you? My email is tuta@gci.net.
August 25th, 2009 at 7:50 AM
Wow – Palin and Prejean could be soulmates – if they had souls.
August 25th, 2009 at 7:50 AM
*******dear alaska sisu go to the forum look under events and meetings then click nyc mudstock then find where i have commented and you see a little button on the left that says p m. that’s how i do it.
August 25th, 2009 at 7:52 AM
***alaska sisu when try your e-mail it wouldn’t go through. i don’t have ‘outlook’
August 25th, 2009 at 7:56 AM
Why would someone ever consider paying $549 for jeans? You can buy an iron- on patch of SP and stick it where-ever you like.
I guess this is a way of collecting funds for her campaign contribution. Which needs to be reported!! I hope that she is keeping track of the contributions.
Prejean? When did she become significant?
August 25th, 2009 at 8:06 AM
Gah! Can’t you just see Bill Kristol parading around in those jeans???
“NOTHING comes between me and my Sarahs.”
’scuse me, I have to go bleach my eyeballs now.
August 25th, 2009 at 8:21 AM
great! now you can fart on SP’s face..priceless..
August 25th, 2009 at 8:55 AM
Quittypants, Miss California and Michelle Bachmann= The Unholy Trinity!!
August 25th, 2009 at 8:57 AM
Some of the reactions here on the Palin buttface jeans are so funny, why not repeat them over at the comment section AKM linked to?
Mine was “Somehow, sitting on Sarah Palin’s face seems both kinky, and appropriate… “
August 25th, 2009 at 9:23 AM
And yes, those jeans DO make her b*tt look fat!
August 25th, 2009 at 12:33 PM
I’d love a pair of those jeans. I’d wear them every time I had bad gas. Take that sarah.
August 25th, 2009 at 2:59 PM
Kajo I was going to say there were other types of pants with different faces etc on them and did not have the link so thanks.I think it is just someone trying to make a killing off of palin especially and they went from there. I loved the duck pair.Who would pay that much,not even palins supporters would I don’t think .Would be kind of funny if they did LOL.
Rats hate um I lived in an old farm house and they lived in the Barn and eventually got into the walls of the house,I found that out cause I caught one in a trap.Boy did I move fast.I could hear them scratching in the walls and couldn’t sleep for days on end till I moved.But yes I would have thought environmentalist would have come up with something better
August 25th, 2009 at 3:42 PM
That last line. Wow. A truly hard hitting one.
August 25th, 2009 at 4:37 PM
Prejean and Palin are two peas in a pod. There is the ‘dream team’ for 2012—one with fake boobs and the other with a fake brain. Waiting for someone to design toilet paper with Sarah Palin’s face so I can laugh every time I wipe!
August 25th, 2009 at 4:49 PM
Does this mean SP is a crack head????
August 25th, 2009 at 4:52 PM
Does this mean SP is a crackhead???
August 25th, 2009 at 5:33 PM
We can only hope the crazies will try to out wing nut each other during the campaign.
August 26th, 2009 at 11:23 AM
Wow, a Sarah Palin-butt-face jean? That has to be the most appropriate use of her visage yet discovered. Being the “butt of a joke” has new meaning forevermore.
We haven’t seen her down in the lower 48 making all those speeches for all that big money…wha happen? She can’t make speeches with only a one-liner every 2 weeks, and absolutely foolish/ghoulish one-liners at that.
She’s found a friend in Glenn Beck now, promoting his show on her facebook…2 haters fall in hate with each other and call it love?
The mess with the oil companies in AK kinda leaves one wondering…what did Sarah Palin do FOR AK while in office? Nada apparently.