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Opossums Overrun Brooklyn, Fail To Eliminate Rats
__roo writes "In a bizarre case of life imitates the Simpsons, New York City officials introduced a population of opossums into Brooklyn parks and under the boardwalk at Coney Island, apparently convinced that the opossums would eat all of the rats in the borough and then conveniently die of starvation. Several years later, the opossums have not only failed to eliminate the rat epidemic from New York City, but they have thrived, turning into a sharp-toothed, foul-odored epidemic of their own."
Based on my experience, automobiles seem to work wonders on these things. Clearly, we just need to bring in more automobiles to New York.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Just tell the hipsters in Brooklyn that it's totally ironic to wear live Opossums on their heads. Kill two birds with one stone.
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Just bring in a colony of ferocious lions to eat the possums. When the lions become a problem, bring in gorillas to fight the lions. Then in winter the cold will kill the gorillas. Problem solved!
Did they learn nothing from the story of the old lady who swallowed a fly?
Poor thing. I hear she died.
Those who have telepathy have no need to RTFA.
Bring in alligators to eat the opossum, and then in the winter, they'll all freeze to death.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
We had to deal with a bold, insane, possibly rabid raccoon on the front porch last week. Believe me, it's scary when the wild animals decide they're not afraid of you at all.
We have these in Chicago; one died in my back yard. They're just like rats, but bigger. I can't believe anyone thought this was a good idea.
Life always find its way...
The Opossum's most effective predator is the Reticulated Gap-Toothed Yokel.
They're not liable to freeze to death, but they'll likely get killed off by wandering into traffic while looking up at them big tall buildings.
Seriously though, no one in their right mind down here would try to destroy a rat problem with a possum problem. Matter of fact, anyone that doesn't call them 'possum' doesn't really have any experience with the nasty things. The 'opossum' is about one of the nastiest animals I have ever had the displeasure of looking at. We get them in the garbage can every now and then... They get stuck and can't get out if there's not enough in the can for them to climb out. I usually just leave them there and let the trash man take care of them. I've poked at them a little bit and they just show their teeth and hiss. I've never seen them play dead. They're about the #2 roadkill item around here, after armadillo...
So New York, I hear that badgers eat possum... interested?
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
This story is giving me back a google text ad for "Alabama Pest Control" Yes, it got the location right.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
That's a mighty nice soapbox you have there.
With a stick and some string, you'd have an even better possum trap.
Maybe I have the benefit of experience, having lived in the south and all, but WHO WOULD BE SO F#$%ING STUPID AS TO USE POSSUMS FOR PEST CONTROL?
The damn things are like the mammalian answer to cockroaches. If they didn't have typical mammalian susceptibility to radiation, odds on them among southerners would be 10:1, their favor against roaches to survive a nuclear holocaust by eating the remaining roaches and being the last species standing.
No way. It's from The Post!
I'm curious if anyone knows of any success stories of using this strategy with large animals.
It definitely seems to work on smaller scales, like buying praying mantis eggs to control garden pests. But I'm not sure I've ever heard of a success involving anything much bigger than that.
HA HA!
I know this is Idle, but still.
Newspapers: New York Times, Washington Post.
Tabloids: New York Post, Washington Times.
If this is a real story, is there a real paper carrying it somewhere?
Sort of, here's a United Press International feed: http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2010/09/19/Immigrant-opossums-adapt-to-Brooklyn/UPI-90141284911712/
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
Anything can be solved with a BFG.
Their unspecialized biology, flexible diet and reproductive strategy make them successful colonizers and survivors in diverse locations and conditions.
If they had just read the first two paragraphs in wikipedia, they'd know possums don't just "die off" after there's no more rats.
Should be one of that kind that could be natural enemy of rats or oppossums. And that way we give Australia the revenge chance for the rabbits or the frogs
As someone raised in Hawaii, I'm pretty shocked that people still think that introducing yet another new species into an ecosystem is going to solve any problems. I thought we all figured this out over 100 years ago?
I remember a line from "Cheers"
Norm: There's a dead possum in the stairwell... at least I hope it's a possum. I hate to think a rat could get that big...
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
I do believe that integrated pest management techniques are a valid approach, and that we are going to have a lot of trial and error before we come up with safe and effective approaches to using one species to control another like that. So the part about it failing doesn't really annoy me (and I live in Brooklyn). The part that kind of offends me is that this decision was made by a Community Board, rather than by trained professionals in the NYC or NYS DEPs.
Have we not learned from Australia?
We've given Australia plague after plague after plague. From rabbits to buffalo and from camels to toads. And they didn't even keep any captive Jewish slaves. Introducing new species as a way of killing a current one is rarely a good idea.
What is much, much more effective is introducing large numbers of sterile animals of the same group into the wild though.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
Alligators now being brought in to deal with Opossum problem. Rats move to Harlem.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I had one die in my parking spot a few months ago. Maybe it ate a bad rat.
How many times has man transplanted a wild animal or plant from one place to another to try to eradicate a pest? How many times has it succeeded?
Earlier this year my SO and I went to St. John, USVI for vacation. We learned how they had a major rat problem on the island back in the 1800's. Some enterprising individual decided to introduce a bunch of mongoose (mongeese?) to the island to eradicate the rats. The only problem is that the rats are nocturnal and mongoose aren't, so they just ended up with a rat problem at night and a mongoose problem during the day...
What the troll... From your argument... humans are better off to not do anything at all. But we know that isn't possible because every action has a reaction and life doesn't exactly stand still... Way to be constructive.
Comparing the removal of rats to Cuba and the economy is an awfully big stretch.
From your argument, we shouldn't even have money. Should we still be trading with horses and wives?
Back on-topic... Yes, New York messed up. But... learning from our actions, being able to document it for later generations and improve upon it next time is what makes us different from the opossums. This is why we don't go around blowing up whale carcasses anymore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possum#Introduction_into_New_Zealand Good luck with that, New York.
Divide a cake by zero. Is it still a cake?
Even if they did elminate the rats we'd still have the same problem...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
I thought racism was over :(
Ever been to 4chan?
Bow-ties are cool.
Yes! Badgers with frigging lasers on their heads!
You're misunderstanding the situation. The Possums were not introduced to compete with rats; they were introduced to provide a steady source of protein for the homeless. Unfortunately, they neglected to teach the homeless how to catch 'em.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I heard that when they play possum is when you pick them up by their tail and launch them into the shredding machine nearby,
if many of them can be fooled into playing possum, there would be no real work to be done except maybe
cleaning up afterwards the big mess left behind, but we can bring in a whole bunch of vultures to nest on the nearby island,
and then let them swoop in and eat away the carcasses....
Opossum's are particularly resistant to rabies due to a low body temperature+environment. That's just FUD sensationalism.
Don't badmouth the opossum like that.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
New York won't have a problem. There is already a natural predator of the opossum: taxicabs.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm surprised they didn't go with mongooses - it worked so well in Hawaii:
http://www.susanscott.net/Oceanwatch2002/apr19-02.html
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
My argument is simple: people can't predict a simple thing in a complex environment, like what would introduction of opossums do into an environment that didn't have them before.
It's as if people didn't have any prior experience in the matter. Oh, wait, yeah, they did.
your straw argument doesn't hold water either. I am not talking about trading horses, I am talking about the chances that gov't will do anything right when it concerns economy, as if it hasn't been tried before to control economy that way by a gov't. Yes, it has been tried. It was a failure. Watch the video debate I attached in the previous comment.
You can't handle the truth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsupial A marsupial is a mammal.
Possums are said to eat rats but I'll bet it's way easier, in Brooklyn, for them to find food that doesn't bite back. Live and let live.
Nate
they aren't racist, they're just trying to be offensive.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
So, what you're saying is: people predict that getting the government out of the economy is going to save the economy.
I'm sure the irony was unintentional.
Snikt!
Having RTFA and the comments on the FA, I'd say that targeting rats was the wrong effort. They need to breed an oppossum that eats trolls. Man, that was a pretty intense display. I'll never complain about /. trolls again.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
Any Ozarks farm boy could have pointed out the folly of this solution. Opossums are adept survivors. They can thrive in urban environments quite easily. All they need is a reliable food source, like garbage, and they'll breed like, uh, rats.
Proverbs 21:19
I once encountered some city kids who thought an opossum they saw hanging around a dumpster was a rat. This now has me wondering how many of those "rats the size of small dogs" stories I've heard in the past were just mistaken identity. PS. I'm from the land of Pogo where opossums are not just a wild animal - they can be dinner!
Mama, I got 'dem ole cosmic blues again.
-Nelson Muntz
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
The whole idea is almost mind-bogglingly dumb. Where did they get the idea that possums would eat rats? They mostly eat carrion and bugs.
Maybe for their next trick they can introduce a herd of cows... you know, to eat the possums.
Skunks with fricking lasers!
They're pretty dumb, and they're pretty nasty. One got into a fight with my three dogs a few weeks ago. It ended with a late night trip to the emergency vet for one of them. I can't imagine it ended well for the opossum, but it was dark and I couldn't really see the outcome of the fight, I could only hear it.
Lesson #1 in life... if you hear a thump and three angry dogs start barking, DO NOT run straight towards them.
That's what air rifles are for. .410 shotguns are for. Effective range about 20-25 yards max.
And also what
Just bring in sharks to eat the possums. (And please, no laser jokes. That would undermine the seriousness of my suggestion.)
Table-ized A.I.
+1 Informative, Opossums are indeed marsupials. Marsupials are mammals, hooray!
You seem to be having problems with the multiple levels there are of classification. At the highest level you have animal, plant etc. Then you have mammal, reptile, etc. Then you have marsupial, pachyderm, etc.
I'm not sure if it's epic, but you certainly fail.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
It is astounding that these northern city types fear such trivial critters as possums. I'll bet you guys are a real hoot with a rattler or a boar or a little black bear. Southerners have been known to cook all three and possums as well for supper.
Yeah that's why Canada and western Europe are total hellholes, because of their nasty awful regulation, which is exactly the same as Cuba/USSR-style communism.
Now the lightly regulated USA on the other hand is a proper free country, with it's stable economy, large and growing wealthy middle class, and affordable health care. Some day the USA might reach the dream of no regulation at all like Somalia once did.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
There's a really simple solution to this problem - stop feeding the homeless.
... they don't freaking eat rats! So why the hell would you import them to deal with your rat problem?
OK. That's fine. But when the zombies start marching down your street, don't bother knocking on my door.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
They could have asked anybody from New Zealand about possums to find out how stupid an idea this is. Or they could have asked anyone from the north of Australia about cane toads to get the same sort of answer.
New York City is one of the two places in the United States that outlaws ferrets (the other being California, but that is changing). And ferrets are great ratters and mousers. They were widely bred and kept here in the US prior to WW II, for just that purpose: keeping down the mice and rats at farms. And they also make great pets.
Further, NOWHERE in the Western Hemisphere are there any feral colonies of the domestic variety of ferret. They just don't survive well here outside of captivity.
So New York, in its "infinite wisdom" (pardon the sarcasm), outlaws ferrets but imports possums, which ARE known to breed in the wild and form feral colonies.
Yet another reason I don't live in New York. Its leadership has made many decisions of this quality.
What exactly is the relevance of a 19th century economy with industrialisation and a continent of untapped natural resources with endless almost-free labour to exploit it, with today's circumstances?
Not that any of this is remotely on topic.
I hear that the possums vote republican.
Just because you find the truth to be hurtful to your perceived manliness
I actually know more female gun owners than male gun owners. Sorry if that doesn't fit into your stereotyping.
and now you are exposed to the world with nothing left but your own shortcomings.
If all gun owners had the shortcomings that you ascribe to us you would have been murdered a long time ago.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Simply stop selling and sending food to New York. When people begin starving, the most resourceful will look for food in trash. When they meet competition from the pesky critters, they'll kill them and even feed on them. Finally, when the possum problem is controlled, they can send food back into New York. Next, they can finally start thinking about how to deal with the rat problem appropriately!
My sig is better than your sig.