Take Two Every Four Hours

What do you take for a snake headache? I'm not going to Guam. Not now. Not in the near future. Perhaps never. And there are two million reasons: brown tree snakes. In a country that is a mere 30 miles long and about 6 miles wide, there are more than 2 million venomous critters like the one pictured. One would be hard pressed to swing a dead cat without hitting (and presumably angering) one of these three-foot snakes, it would seem. Power outages are so frequent from snakes slithering along the power lines that they've become known as "brown outs." It is reported by the BBC that people have even awakened with the reptile lying beside them in bed. No thank you. Explaining the explosion is easy...eradicating the nuisance is proving a headache. It used to be that one needed to fear only avian waste from overhear...now, it gets more dangerous. It is postulated that the snakes, native to New Guinea, got to Guam at the end of WWII when military equipment was moved from Papua to Guam for refurbishing. Some (or maybe just one pregnant female) snakes came along, and with no natural predators to halt the (re) production of snakes, they quickly began to eradicate the bird population (being in trees, you see). After 10 of 12 native bird species had been wiped out, experts figured that since the bird population had been decimated, the snakes would begin to die off...there being no food source. This is a typical reaction in nature to overpopulation. As it happened, though, the snakes adapted and began dropping to the ground to feast on small mammals and climbing into beds across the country and whatnot. Now the problem has reached epic proportion, and the country has begun suing elite parachute troops to stem the tide. In hopes of eradicating the slithery suspects, mice loaded with acetaminophen have been parachuted (really!) into the dense, overhead foliage, tempting the snakes with an easy meal without all that strenuous climbing and without screaming people to distract them. It would appear that, while the main component of aspiring can ease pain in people, it is a major deterrent to life among the snake population. it's time to buy stock in any company that makes aspirin! And stay away from Guam, no matter what the travel brochures tempt you with!