Every time the Aussies try to do something about a troublesome species, it backfires on them, to the point of comedy it seems. I dunno, maybe they don’t actually do anything worse than other countries, but they just get beat up more by the media.
Obviously the birds are quite hardy so the poisons and bullets will have no effect on them. It was only the pesky cats eating them and rabbits eating all the food that was getting in the way of their survival. Surely they will be able to hold on another year without a decent food source until the rabbits can be removed.
That story screwed me up when I was a kid! I first heard it in 1st grade and I still don’t like it.
The old woman is obviously mentally ill, seeing as how she keeps swallowing animals, and no one is helping her.
And when she died (of course!?), it is said with such callousness as if it’s a throwaway thought. Every life is important and should be cherished and just saying “of course” like it’s something that doesn’t matter is not how life should be viewed. This old woman who swallowed a fly, was someone’s daughter at one time, possible a sister and mother. The fact that no one thought she was important enough to merit a bit more than an ‘‘of course’’ is a scary thought to a child. What if I ended up like that?
What always confuses me is why she keeps eating herbivores to deal with the problem. Shouldn’t someone have suggested that she swallow a Nile Crocodile instead?
I would have said more like the doctor who inserted a fly first because it should solve a few problem the old bat had with not cleaning her teeth and then the problems started …
Cane toads anyone? Try finding something to swallow after consuming that thing.
Ah, see…it made me uneasy, too, but for entirely different reasons.
I kept imagining the logistics of actually swallowing those animals. The gaping maw, the scraping of the tonsils as limbs passed, the bulging of the esophagus and the distention of the stomach… By the time we got to the goat, I was kind of faint with panic.