File photo of a brown tree snake in Guam (© Gordon Roda/US Fish and Wildlife Service/AP)

There are tree snakes invading Guam and they're really gross

5/9/2012

You know those movies where a bunch of clueless people go on vacay to some remote island and it ends up turning into a horror flick? Yeah, well, that's what Guam is now. Once a tropical paradise (before all those military installations), the territory is now so overrun with brown tree snakes (estimate: 2 million) that they cause power outages called "brown outs" and slither into residents' beds. But human inconvenience is nothing compared with the devastation they've wreaked on the animal kingdom, which they've nearly hunted into extinction. With any luck, the snakes will eat themselves into oblivion, too: Scientists are air-dropping armies of poison-laced mice in parachutes as a killer snack for the venomous creatures.

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