ICE the Mice_2
Alright then, solutions in Part I are tried and true. Now let’s get original!
?Ladies and gents,
?3.?Meet the ferrets!
Credit: Popular Science https://www.popsci.com/story/environment/save-black-footed-ferret/
??????????Lovely, aren’t they?
?????????Indeed they are! But deadly to mice!
?????????Highly intelligent, highly tamed AND trainable. Trainable is important because we don’t want a ferret to kill just enough mice to have his fill. No; that would be impractical and a waste of resources. We want them to be killing machines! Which is in their nature, so we just have to nurture their murderous instincts for the right purpose! Ha ha!
?????????You know, this has been done before. In Victorian England, ferrets were used to kill rats! Rats! Big, disgusting, ferocious sewer rats – the kind not afraid to attack even dogs! And the ferrets ate them for breakfast (sic). Imagine what carnage (sad, but necessary) they will do among these puny mice!
?????????Because back then, the efforts were not concerted, the rats were not exterminated – indeed they still thrive to this day... But we can do it NOW!
?????????You know, ferrets are kept as pets or used for pest control in many countries around the world.
?????????Surely there are at least a few thousand adult tamed ?ferrets all over the world up for sale/donation. Probably many more. Anyone?
?????????So use them! Especially since they are crepuscular (hunt at dusk and dawn, though some studies show they will hunt at night too), thus nicely complementing the dogs in daytime for a 24h/day mice-killing shift.
Credit: Asser Hunter's Ferrets
??????????Treat the mice infestation as wildfires! According to the size of affected areas and intensity of the infestation (color-coded maps), apply the same principles as with fires!
?Isolate,
Contain,
Extinguish.
?ICE the mice!
??????????Deploy resources (dogs and ferrets for the moment, there are MORE to come, so hold on to your breeches!) accordingly.
?????????Of course mice don’t behave like fires nor dogs/ferrets like water and sand. Again, let the experts find the best way to not let any of the little buggers escape the deadly encirclement. And if some do (as they will), have posses at the ready to hunt them down and kill them. (More on this later.)
?PROVISIONS
Now, what about the ferrets? This is like fighting fire with fire. And this particular “fire” is LIFE – it wants to keep on living – through reproduction, of course.
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?Obvious solution:
?????????1 Give all the males a vasectomy* before releasing them into the wild
??????????2 Attach a GPS locator to all of them. An implant would be ideal, but apparently, with the current technology, they can’t be made small enough for animals this size. (for humans, good news! We’re big enough, we can be implanted =D).
?????????Provide them all, male and female, with a GPS collar. For future location. And adoption. It has been done with wild animals for decades. Easy-peasy. The battery life of the device shouldn’t need be more than a few months. Redundancy means safety – make it longer if possible. Moreover, you don’t need a classical “battery”. These are not inert objects. They are live, highly active creatures. So, beside the regulation battery (which will kick off only if all other power sources fail), have, one or both:
i)????????????Quartz-based power source, just as the watches that need no battery or rewinding; this is very simple, and CHEAP technology
ii)???????????Use the body heat of the little weasel for power; very little amount required compared to what it takes to keep its body temperature
??????????The chip in the collar should automatically activate and send a signal to the satellite just a few times a day, not continuously. And when we decide the mice are finished, the job is done, the satellite will tell the collar chip to keep transmitting until the ferret is retrieved from the wild.
??????????3 If there aren’t enough available ferrets, provisions will have to be made to increase their numbers: so let them mate before the snipping, and then will have to retrieve the females from the wild before they give birth. ???????
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* Vasectomy is very simple surgery, at least as simple as castration from the doctor’s point of view. And perfectly humane – I mean, humans do it to themselves, duh! As a bonus, there are reports that some guys who got snipped experienced increased libido. Whereas castration is a true crime against humanity. Humanity as the quality of being human; quality which YOU, the one which (sic) orders (or performs!) such a crime, will lose.
?????????Normal gestation period is 40-44 day, so let’s say 6 weeks, So about 5 weeks after mating they should begin to be brought back inside enclosures.
?????????No real danger of a ferret invasion of the wild, even if the mommies are found some days after birth. The babies can’t survive without care for the first few weeks (maybe more), much less mate. But it is better to get the jills (females) before they give birth for their sake and the kits’ (the babies).
?This is just to cover all bases. I am sure there will be enough adult domestic ferrets in the world to get the job done in one go.
?Nike it (just do it.). And Victory (Nike) will be yours.
??????????And finally, and I’m just spit-balling here, because I dunno how many of the little pest are out there, let’s play with numbers.
?????????They’re probably hundreds of millions; again, to be on the safe side (i.e., assume the worst), let’s say there’s a few billion - 3 BILLION of them.
?????????What a buffet for the ferrets! I think it’s fair to estimate, that ONE ferret can kill THOUSANDS in one day. Let’s also not forget, that unlike their relatives in the Mustelidae family, ferrets are social animals – live and hunt in groups – called a... Busyness. Get it? Because they’re so full of life and energy.
?????????Three is a lucky number, let’s posit that ONE FERRET can kill THREE THOUSAND MICE A DAY (24-hour interval, as I said they don’t usually hunt in daytime). Is this exaggerating? I don’t think so. That means, we need 1,000,000 ferret-days to kill ALL mice in one day. You know what I mean, right? To measure the amount of work needed to get a job done, we use man-hour.
?????????Here, we use ferret-day. For example, it will take one million of the long furry mavericks to get the job done in 1 day, half a mil in 2 days, 33,000 only for one month. And so on.
?????????I’m guessing that getting and training a few hundred thousand ferrets all at once might be challenging :). But a few thousand – say 3000 initial males and 3000 females – doesn’t seem too difficult.
??????????And in the end, of course, the retrieval of the heroes – all ferrets must be localized by GPS and retrieved. And offered for adoption as prize-pets to who wants them.
?????????Australian ecosystem is too delicate to allow a few thousands of ferrets to have a picnic until they die of old age, even if they’re not able to reproduce!?
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