BTS killed :(

[NicoleRussell]

Dangerous snake killed at McAAP


This photo provided by USGS shows the snake killed at McAAP.

http://mcalesternews.com/articles/20...ries/top01.txt

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By JAMES BEATY, Senior Editor
A venomous Brown Treesnake which journeyed from Guam to the McAlester Army
Ammunition Plant quickly met its demise at the hands of McAAP employees.

Now, its odyssey is being studied in an attempt to keep more of the
dangerous snakes from hitching a ride from Guam to the U.S. mainland.

McAAP workers saw the snake hanging from a pallet being unloaded from a huge
conex box on Sept. 12, according to McAAP spokesman Mark Hughes. The boxes,
shipped to McAAP from Guam, are eight feet wide, 20 feet long and 96 inches
tall. Hughes said the pallets are stored outdoors in Guam.

Once workers at McAAP spotted the snake on a receiving dock at the plant,
they reacted quickly.

"They saw it when an employee was pulling a pallet with a forklift," Hughes
said. They knocked the snake from the box and killed it by hitting it in the
head with a board.

McAAP Environmental Specialist Dale Starry contacted plant Land Manager Bill
Starry. They packed the snake in ice and sent it to the U.S. Geological
Survey Fort Collins Science Center in Fort Collins, Colo., for positive
identification.

Dr. Gordon Rodda, a zoologist and the Brown Treesnake project leader at the
center, said it's rare - but not unheard of - for one of the snakes to
travel from Guam to the U.S. mainland.

"This is only the second time we know of," Rodda said. The other time
occurred on May 12, 1993.

"It was in a washing machine at Corpus Christi, Texas," he said.

The snake from McAAP measured four and one-third feet in length, according
to Rodda. He said it's been sent to the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in
Honolulu, Hawaii, where the snake's body will be preserved in case it's
needed for further study.

Rodda said the swift actions of McAAP personnel in putting the snake on ice
and sending it to the center will prove helpful in trying to keep more Brown
Treensnakes from making their way off Guam.

The box containing the Brown Treesnake had been loaded in Guam in June, part
of a load of military cargo bound for the U.S. It traveled across the U.S.
in a flatbed truck and then had remained in a shed for about a month during
the summer, according to Rodda.

Rodda is sure the snake crawled into the pallet on its own. Brown Treesnakes
have caused so many problems in Guam, the U.S. has mounted a major effort to
try and prevent the snakes from climbing into crates, pallets and aircraft
leaving the island.

The Department of Defense spends more than $1 million annually on the
Military Brown Treesnake Control program. Interdiction efforts include the
use of snake-sniffing dogs, traps, barriers and even making the habitat less
hospitable.

Problems the snakes cause for the military include delays in training and
impacting wildlife on military managed lands.

Although the snakes are venomous, it takes a while for them to inject the
poison into victims.

"The average person bit by a snake in Oklahoma might be a 21-year-old with a
rock in his hand, but the average bite victim in Guam is 6 months old and
sleeping in a crib," Rodda said.

The snakes are also blamed for causing power outages by climbing onto wires,
decimating the poultry industry by killing chickens and eating eggs and with
wiping out some of the other species on Guam.

Hopefully, the information learned from the incident at McAAP will help keep
more of the species from making their way to the U.S., Rodda said.

"We need information to help with the interdiction process," he said.

Contact James Beaty at jbeaty@mcalesternews.com