Muscatine

DON'T GO TO NEW ZEALAND-

World's Biggest Rat Hunt

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This was sent in by a ScaryPlace reader who credits Rodney Joyce and Reuters.

New Zealand conservation officials have dropped 120 tonnes of bait and a team of 20 rat hunters onto a remote sub-Antarctic island in what they say is the largest rodent eradication project the world has ever seen.

They aim to wipe out up to 200,000 Norway rats probably introduced to Campbell Island, 438 miles south of New Zealand's South Island, by 19th century whalers and sealers. The $1.1 million kill is designed to restore the 11,300 hectare island to its natural state and allow the return of a flightless teal duck and a species of wading bird found only on the island. A small population of Campbell Island teal has been preserved in captivity while Campbell Island snipes were discovered still surviving on a nearby islet free of rodents.

''This newly discovered bird was found on a tiny rock stack on the coast of Campbell Island in 1997,'' Conservation Minister Sandra Lee said in a statement. Lee said the project eclipsed in size an earlier eradication program -- on 3,100 hectare Langara Island in British Columbia, Canada.

The Department of Conservation said it would be two years before it knew if rats had gone from the island -- reported to have the highest concentration of rats in the world -- but already most of the bait had been carried to burrows by hungry rats.

''Radio transmitters were attached to several live rats at the start of the operation and all have since been found dead,'' the department said. ''The rats have removed most of the bait from the surface of the ground and cached it in their burrows.''

New Zealand has had success in eliminating rats from smaller islands, including Kapiti Island near Wellington which is now a bird sanctuary.

The Campbell Island program got off to an embarrassing start in May when 18 tonnes of poison bound for the island spilled into the sea after a truck crash near a whale breeding site around 125 miles north of Christchurch. But no environmental damage resulted.

Norway rats are prodigious breeders, with females capable of producing up to seven litters of a dozen pups each year. The gestation period is just 22 days, and females mate when they are as young as three months old.

The top 9-



The Top 9 Liberal
New Years Resolutions


9> Nancy Pelosi: Finish filing teeth to needle-sharp points.

8> Al Sharpton: Ride this Trent Lott thing for all it?’s worth.

7> Sarah Jane Olson/Katie Soliah: Create ?“EarthMothrz?” gang to protect her from constant rogering in prison.

6> Al Gore, after SNL appearance: ?“(1) Get a day job. (2) Don?’t quit it.?”

5> A moratorium on phone calls during the hours of noon and 6pm, when Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are on the air.

4> Governor Howard Dean: Keep ID handy to remind people who I am.

3> Alec Baldwin: ?“Spend more time looking for a new home in France.?”

2> Al Gore: Get in line early for Episode III.


and the Number 1 Liberal New Years Resolution?…


1> Barbra Streisand: ?“Werk on propr speeling.?”

The real scrooges-

http://newsbusters.org/blog

Chgo Sun-Times: Mean Scrooge a Republican, Nice Scrooge a
Liberal?
By Warner Todd Huston | December 25, 2007 - 11:21 ET

Never has so few words been so wrong until the the Christmas
Day Chicago Sun-Times Daily Rant came along. Not only does
it unreasonably call the mean, pre-ghosted version of the
Scrooge character a ''traditional, conservative Republican''
but it then goes on to swerve to the opposite -- and equally
wrong -- conclusion that the post-ghostie Scrooge is a
''bleeding-heart liberal.'' In truth BOTH claims are quite
wide of the mark in analogy. In fact, not only did the
Sun-times miss a true reading of the characters, they got
them juxtaposed!

Here is the short, and woefully wrong Christmas Day Daily Rant:

I can't understand why people are so in love with
Charles Dickens' story ''A Christmas Carol.''

Let me see if I understand the story right: Scrooge
starts out as a traditional, conservative Republican, and
because of the interference of three, uh, ghosts, he ends up
a bleeding-heart liberal. Why is this such a good thing?

Story Continues Below Ad ???«

Erroneous Claim One: the eeevil Republican Scrooge

The fact is, that Republicans are not only happier, but they
also give more to charity than do Democrats and liberals.
This being true, calling the sour, mean-spirited, miserly
pre-ghosted Ebenezer Scrooge a ''traditional, conservative
Republican'' is an absurd claim. Republicans are neither
miserly nor mean as a general rule by the facts we have at
our fingertips.

So, the mean Scrooge being a typical GOPer is absurd and
insulting.

Erroneous Claim Two: the bleeding-heart liberal Scrooge

Similarly, the post-ghostie Scrooge is not a typical liberal
at all. The Scrooge that is so happy to give his fortune
away does not match the actions of a liberal. You see, a
liberal doesn't want to give his own money away, he wants to
give every one else's money away. As noted above the proof
of that is the fact that they don't give to charity, but
support nanny state government programs and confiscatory
taxes. Since we saw above that Republicans are more happy,
and more charitable it is far less likely that a Scrooge
that is deliriously happy to be helping others with his own
fortune could be in any way a ''bleeding-heart liberal''!

And last but not least, in the original book Scrooge attends
church after his ghostly visits. This in and of itself
disqualifies Scrooge as being a Democrat OR a liberal!

Friends

I have friends that are liberal and some that are conserative. They both treat me with respect, and I treat them the same way as I see good and bad in both views.
I feel that if you can not look at both sides of a issue, you have a problem.