As though pet pythons weren’t enough for Florida to deal with, there’s another immigrant arrival:
Giant African snails were found in the city of Port Richey, just north of Tampa. The town will be quarantined for two years, prohibiting residents from moving plants and soil outside of the quarantine zone. The snail is also damaging to the environment, feasting on more than 500 different plants, and has a taste for concrete, which is detrimental to infrastructure.
How giant? This giant:
And:
The invasive shelled gastropods, which are native to Africa, are carrying the parasite lungworm that leads to meningitis in humans.
Even better:
The snail is also damaging to the environment, feasting on more than 500 different plants, and has a taste for concrete, which is detrimental to infrastructure.
Africa wins again. Australia may have bird-eating spiders, but Africa’s snails eat buildings.
Oh great! We can add those to our concrete eating termites and walking catfish, here in Florida. I wonder if they make decent escargot if you can cook the lungworm out of them.
Escargot … Larry … you beat me to the punch. Given “supply chain challenges” of late, is there enough butter and garlic available?
The two of you can leave now. That disgusting French nonsense has no place on this blog.
I actually ate one of those things one time, long ago. Had the consistency and flavor of a pencil eraser. Yes, you know what I mean.
Kim,
I’m surprised you capitalized “French” …
I tried escargo a couple of times and don’t see what the big deal is about them. butter, garlic and pencil erasers. meh.
JQ
get some cajuns onto these snails and they’ll have the population under control tout suite. They’ll either eradicate them or they’ll raise them in captivity and add them to a crawfish boil. Hey Babeau, we have some good eats for you!
JQ
Kim: From your position as the Sage of Sefrica, please tell us again why we should not just nuke this continent and turn it into one huge sand-box!
I’ll get back to you on that.
I did once suggest the “wall around the whole continent and let them all kill each other” solution, but that was apparently too hateful, raaaayyyyciss, etc.
How about we just supply them a whole lot of fireworks as Bugs Bunny would do: Pikachu fireworks powns a brutha
If nothing else it would make a nice plot line for a new “Snake” Plissken Escape from Africa movie.
Oh my! Look at all those slow moving pistol and rifle targets. Seems to me a .22 would be sufficient to destroy their shell and innards. Open season and let every kid go hunting. To make it interesting, how about a bounty of 30 cents each, that at least pays for the ammo and fun.