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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."
I'm hoping we can get the pythons to eat the snails.
Giant snail racing. Hell yes.
The French?
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?
According to Wikipedia *people* eat them:
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It sounds like it's time to salt the roads in Florida.
The French?
But what will we do when the French start to run amuck?!
Why, then we get Germans!
Could things be any better, here in the Sunshine state?
They eat stucco.
In just 24 short months, it is possible that South Florida returns to its native habitat.
BONUS: With the new, snail-driven housing scarcity introduced to an otherwise depressed real estate bubble, rewards are again possible for developers and speculators!
Now, mind that sinkhole. We've got a Colombian cocaine submarine to rendezvous with.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Top general Erwin Gastropod calls it Schildkrötenkrieg
Your German is perfect! Both in your grammar, and the quality of your joke.
Russian winters.
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.
No offense to the people of South Florida, but between this, pythons, gators, numerous poison snakes, etc., I'm glad I live up north. The most dangerous things we have up here are bears, you've generally got to go into the woods to find them, and somehow I'd rather be attacked by a fellow mammal. Hold it, you've got them too, right?
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
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.
Hence the first rule of warfare: never invade Russia (The Art of Warfare, Sun Tzu, revised edition).
I thought the first rule of warfare is: "never get involved in a land war in Asia"
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.