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Giant Snails Invade Florida
Edgewood_Dirk writes "First spotted in 2011, Giant African Land Snails have migrated to Florida, and are causing massive agricultural and social problems in the state. Hugely destructive to crops, the creatures themselves are dangerous, in that they are able to gnaw through stucco and plastics, will eat almost any organic material, their shells are hard enough to pop tires on the freeway and become shrapnel when run over by lawnmowers. Over a thousand are caught each week in Miami-Dade County and their numbers are only growing as more come out of hibernation. They also carry a form of rat lungworm which can cause meningitis in humans, although no human cases have been reported yet."
Hideki!
I'm hoping we can get the pythons to eat the snails.
time to import some predators
Australia pales in comparison to mighty Africa's collection of indigenous lifeforms that can kill you or otherwise ruin your day. Kudzu, killer bees and giant snails... What's next?
Giant snail racing. Hell yes.
Am I the only person that pictured an elderly retiree running from a giant snail in a slow motion chase after reading the title of the article?
It sounds like it's time to salt the roads in Florida.
Do they vote Republican?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Make it a criminal offense to eat them. They will be "poached" out of existence.
Damn! I gotta clean out the freezer...
this sounds like a job for FLORIDA MAN !!!
erm, then again, maybe not...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
In other news, local restaurants now offering great deals on all-you-can-eat escargot
Top general Erwin Gastropod calls it Schildkrötenkrieg
"If you got a ham sandwich in Jamaica or the Dominican Republic, or an orange, and you didn't eat it all and you bring it back into the States and then you discard it, at some point, things can emerge from those products," Feiber said.
Remember kids, finish your oranges just in case there are baby snails in there. Don't discard, digest!
Your German is perfect! Both in your grammar, and the quality of your joke.
I can't wait for the opportunity to use my Biden-mandated shotgun on some fat ass ducks and crabs down yonder in the Sunshine State. Booking my vacation for n+{duckDigestion && crabDigestion}*time days from now...
Whoever named these things might have missed one of this species' abilities.
At this point I say we just evacuate and wall off Florida for fifty years and then take a peek and see how natural selection works this whole mess out. I'm half serious. I realize FL is home to all of these previously foreign creatures because the creatures themselves fit the environment they have been released into despite being foreign, but they will adapt and spread in response to both fighting for resources and further climate change. Although I suppose 50 foot pythons in the sewers of New York might take care of the rat problem.
Whew! Long time no post!
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
If someone can come up with a good recipe involving those snails, garlic, and butter, they won't stand a chance.
Wasn't that already one of those craptastic SciFi, made-for-TV movies?
Not that anyone on Slashdot would ever notice (I mean, who reads TFA anyway, much less TWO of them?) but the FoxNews article is almost word-for-word identical to the Reuters article. Yeah, no surprise there (mass media is amazingly lazy), but did we really have to have two links which said exactly the same thing? Well, at least the Wikipedia link had original content...
Although, for fun, try searching Google for "Snails South Florida" and try to find a news article that /isn't/ a rehash of the Reuter's article. It sure is a slick mess!
steak sauce, im thinking the problem can be eradicated fairly quickly.
http://eideard.com/2009/07/04/how-to-prepare-african-land-snail-for-dinner/
Good people go to bed earlier.
I, for one, welcome our new giant snail overlords!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monster_That_Challenged_the_World
What does this quote from the article even mean?
"If you got a ham sandwich in Jamaica or the Dominican Republic, or an orange, and you didn't eat it all and you bring it back into the States and then you discard it, at some point, things can emerge from those products..."
The vagueness is truly awe inspiring.
It always amazes me that people worry so much about moving one or two genes around in plants in a thought out and carefully controlled manner yet they hardly worry about the introduction of whole functional genomes (i.e. invasive species) into ecosystems. Given the clear and deleterious impacts of introduced species (as opposed to those for GMOs which are debatable at best) you would think there would be large organizations of anti-introduced genome activists.
...heeeereee.....theyyyyy...commmmmme. Ruuuuunnnnn!!!
Obama is trying to take our giant snails
"Look mom, I got these 2 pet snails from our last trip to Africa"
Mom: "Oh my, throw that stuff away!"
Kid goes to nearest pond and dumps them... no natural predators around, fast-forward a few months and boooom! Huge agricultural disaster, yaddah yaddah...
This sig can be distributed under the LGPL license
I for one welcome our new mollusk overlords.
A little bowl of flat beer in the garden works well on the normal variety of snails and slugs. So to handle these monster snails just set up a few troughs of imperial stout.
I'm going to capture one and name it "Gary".
Well, do you ? :)
Examples: California Candor, Dwarf Alberta Spruce, American Redwood, Canadian Maple
African killer bees, African land snails, West Nile virus, Madras eye, Burmese python
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The Gastropod Americans who might have entered the country without proper documentation should not be discriminated against, and they deserve a path to citizenship too.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Before you can do anything, you need to become acquainted with some basics about the land snails.
Conveniently, someone provided an excellent summary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTV23B5gBsQ
welcome our new slimy overlords...
Isn't that kinda, y'know, a useful ability? I'm picturing steel compost bins full of snails and old deli containers.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Say you're recycling and pay per ton, like for aluminum cans etc.
I though Ibis and other birds like that ate snails? Flamingoes, and pelicans surely? They eat mussels and clams and such, right?
And pork can carry trichinosis and many other parastes and diseases dangerous to humans. As can beef, chicken, fish, and pretty much any other animal, though the risk tends to reduce as their biochemistry gets progressively more divergent from our own. That's why they tell you to cook meat thoroughly, *especially* things like pork that can carry a lot of infections that can migrate to humans. Also one of the (several) reasons bushmeat is frowned on - almost anything that can survive in a monkey or ape will be right at home in a human.
Plants are generally safe to eat raw simply because they are *so* biologically different that almost nothing that infects them is likely to be able to jump to humans, so the risks tend to be restricted to poisons produced by either the plant or its parasites, and cooking doesn't help with many of those.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I believe the only solution is to nuke Florida! maybe Lil Kim from Korea can help us!
Good idea! We could then get the tourists to eat the pythons!
Or the pythons to eat the tourists; either way, we win!
Maybe we can get VisitFlorida.com to promote braised Burmese Python with African Snail under glass au jus as a local delicacy. I mean, it worked for oysters. . . .
If they can chew kevlar, they're my new superheroes.
...salt shortage in S. Florida or something? Last I check they didn't like salt too much.
Instead of spending millions on pest control and mitigation, we should spend those dollars on marketing, showing the benefits of using these snails as a valid food source. Once enough people perceive them to be edible, or better yet, desirable, then the problem solves itself to the benefit of our food production system.
Collectively speaking, we Americans have had the luxury of eating premier proteins (beef, chicken, pork) for so long that we've become spoiled and will have a hard time getting over the 'yuck factor' involved here.
You stereotypers are all the same...
You mean besides the ones with blue hair driving at 30 MPH on a 45 MPH divided highway? Because we've had those for a while.
It's the only way to be sure.
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They (PDF warning) dealt with the same invasion back in the '50s
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The Reuters article (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/14/us-usa-florida-snails-idUSBRE93D05620130414) about this mentions they eat through stucco and plasTERS, not plastics.
Get those garlic chopped up and ready for the giant snail....err escargo
Quick! Someone edit the Bugs Bunny GIF so that instead it's a giant snail gnawing through their northern border and sending them off into the ocean! Cause this might actually be a realistic scenario! Hurrah!
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
You boil them first for 10-15 minutes. This forms an incredibly disgusting scum that you must keep cleaning off and cleaning off and cleaning off the top until it's clear -- you might even need to change the water. When the scum is gone, you know the snails are okay -- they're done.
After the snails die, most of them separate from their shells, but some you need to pull out -- that's easy. When they're all removed, you just chop up the snails, dice them up fine and mix them with olive oil, garlic, butter and parsley. Mix them all together, stuff everything back into the snail shells and then bake them until they're hot and bubbly.
In the cooler climate states, we have salt trucks in the winter time that spread salt or a salty brine mixture on the roadways to help melt the snow. Seems like a fairly simple way to deter snail shrapnel on the roadways.
The spiral pattern that catches the eye...
Unretouched pictures, from Florida
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
There's been speculation that North Korea would do something on April 15th. Some people are pointing to the Boston Marathon bombing, but perhaps this is it.
Oh, so you say "But the TFS says that they were first noticed in 2011....."
When did Kim Jong Un come to power? Yes, 2011. Perhaps they've now activated a massive communist snailnet in the US.
Because a duck floats on water.
Now burn the snails!
Alarming nature news story of the week!
"
Giant [snails/snakes/ants/toads/plants/fish] have been [accidentally/deliberately/ignorantly] released into the Florida wilderness. Existing species are decimated! Scientists are alarmed! Locals quoted as saying "I've lived here for [20/30/40/50/60/70/80] years and I've never seen nuthin' like it!"
"
Boilerplate news story, good for local flavour.
We don't need more crabs. Well I don't anyway.
These snails (Achatina fulica) were introduced into India by the brits in the 1800's. The first introduction is thought to be in W.Bengal region. It has since spread all along the east coast and i can personally vouch that in the south they have vanquished the local species. They can be caught in beer traps and killed with salt. The long term solution to this animal is to probably eat them (they are edible and a delicacy ). However they are carriers of meningitis and need to be cooked properly. These animals are hermophrodites and produce about 200 eggs per clutch. i recommend all residents of florida try out the recipe below.
http://www.potironne.com/escargot-recipes/
It's the most famous of the classic blunders, you insensitive clod.
What do they taste like? The quickest way to end an infestation problem is to find a way to make the infestation taste good.
Since when did snails have jaws?
They RASP through anything they work on.
"Sweetest meat this side of Heaven."
I for one welcome our new slow-moving slime-laden overlords.
Ummmm Escargot!!! (please cook thoroughly)