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GRASSY KEY — The U.S. Department of Agriculture returned to Grassy Key this week to conduct the next phase of its Gambian rat extermination project. The agency's Wildlife Control team is back in town to determine how the population fared after more than 1,000 poison bait stations were spread throughout the area. While wildlife officials are on the ground gathering data, hidden cameras will provide a look at where the remaining rat population is moving. The results from those pictures will help dictate the agency's next move. "Based on what we take pictures of ... we may go into some...

BEIJING - People living in communities surrounding a large shallow lake have been overrun by field mice after floodwaters drove the rodents out of islands on the lake, state media reported Monday. The mouse invasion began on June 23 when the Yangtze River flooded, raising the water level in central China's Dongting Lake and submerging mouse holes on lake islands, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Now, an estimated 2 billion mice are ravaging crops in 22 counties around the lake, and authorities were rushing to construct walls and ditches to keep the rodents out. Residents have killed more than...

Deep in the heart of the Florida Keys, wildlife officials are laying bait laced with poison to try to wipe out a colony of enormous African rats that could threaten crops and other animals. U.S. federal and state officials are beginning the final phase of a two-year project to eradicate the Gambian pouched rats, which can grow to the size of a cat and began reproducing in the remote area about eight years ago. "This is the only place in the United States where this is occurring," said Gary Witmer, a biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Wildlife...

New Orleans, La. -- Today, after learning that New Orleans plans to poison rats living in the city as part of its "Rat Busters" program, PETA fired off a letter to Mayor Ray Nagin urging him to work with PETA to develop a humane, effective program to permanently reduce the rat population instead. PETA points out that poisoning rats is not only cruel but also ineffective. Rats from surrounding areas will simply move in to fill the void left by those who were killed, and as long as habitats such as abandoned buildings and food sources such as garbage are...

SAN FERNANDO DE APURE, Venezuela ? As dusk fell on the tropical wetland crawling with iguanas and small crocodilian caimans, Jos? Ismael Jim?nez pointed his harpoon at a rodent about the size of a Labrador retriever. With aim that comes from years of practice, he landed his spear on the back of its head. Farmhands turned hunters stalking the wild capybara, reputedly the world?s largest rodent, on Saturday on Hato Santa Luisa. One of them hurled a harpoon at a wounded capybara. The meat is then salted and dried. But this hunt was not about ridding the country?s southern plains...

Ferrets, rejoice. Or at least, breathe what may be a short-lived sigh of relief. The New York City Council voted 26 to 13 yesterday, with 7 abstentions, to end the bandit status of the small, furry cousin of the weasel, mink and skunk. But the bill legalizing ferrets as pets failed to pass by a veto-proof margin, and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has not been shy about the fact that he is no ferret lover. ''The fight isn't over,'' said Carol Rainey, a Chelsea filmmaker who owns two ferrets. The ferret legalization bill caused an unusually emotional, party-fracturing and, at...

Here's a nasty thought: Your home may have mice. Or worse. And we're not talking about Mickey. How would you know? Short of actually seeing the furry culprits, look for these telltale signs: Rodent droppings (see examples here). Evidence of gnawing on hard surfaces, such as chair legs. Nests, possibly in drawers or inside upholstered furniture. Food and food packages that have been nibbled. If it's any consolation, you're hardly alone. In North America, the roof rat, Norway rat and house mouse are the big three, making their homes right beneath the feet and above the heads of millions of...

Announcing his candidacy to the yawns of the assembled, Biden said of rival Sen. Barack Obama (D.-Ill.), that he was, "[T]he first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." The Rev -- Al Sharpton this time, not Jesse Jackson though both are ever eager for a sound bite -- apparently called Biden and assured him that, "I take a bath every day." Which is more than we needed to know. Accompanying the merriment at Biden's expense was Hillary's Iowa meltdown. Ms. Clinton -- panicked into a premature declaration by Sen. Obama's earlier formation of...

The rodent rampage that caused havoc in 1999 seems to be back, and experts aren't sure why. A strange and unexplained invasion of mice around the Apopka area in 1999 appears poised for a repeat. Health authorities, plant-nursery owners and state agricultural experts said Monday that mice are infiltrating homes, storage areas and offices along U.S. Highway 441 and the northeast shore of Lake Apopka. "One drowned in a secretary's coffee cup," said Tom Stutzman, site manager at Twyford International plant nursery on Fudge Road. "Every day it seems like it's getting worse. Here we go again." Authorities are just...

As city expands into their space, prairie dogs find backyard homes Meet the Neighbors BY ROBIN BRISCOE AVALANCHE-JOURNAL A prairie dog peeks his head from his home while hundreds of his friends and family are cozy within a dirt mound below the earth. "We have got hundreds of them right now," Jim Gerlt, executive pastor at Bacon Heights Baptist Church, said, referring to the prairie dog town spanning 33 acres on the land reserved for the church's new building at 110th Street and Slide Road. "Any time you buy land you're going to have prairie dogs," Gerlt said. "That's just...

For decades, in thousands of laboratories across the country, biomedical researchers have relied on laboratory rats and mice to devise treatments for cancer, heart disease, inflammation and a host of other human afflictions. But what if, despite all the rigorous procedures to ensure valuable test results, many of those studies have been skewed by the most seemingly mundane of factors: what the animals are routinely fed? The concern is that researchers have unwittingly administered hormones present in some rodent chow. A small but growing number of scientists are warning that these hormones are a hidden element in millions of laboratory...

Big Rodents Overrun Washington Seniors "The marmots are coming, the marmots are coming." Seniors living in Wine Country Villa probably wish they had gotten such a warning.

BLANDING, Utah, May 16 (UPI) -- The campground at Utah's Natural Bridges National Monument has been closed because of an outbreak of bubonic plague among rodents, a report said. National Park Service officials said fleas that transmit the so-called Black Death to field mice and chipmunks would be killed with insecticides. When satisfied that has worked, the popular campground 40 miles west of Blanding, Utah, will be reopened, officials said. "We come down on the conservative side when it comes to closing campgrounds," Joe Winkelmaier of U.S. Public Health Service told the Salt Lake Tribune. "We just like to be...

SEATTLE - A water-loving rodent native to South America that has destroyed thousands of acres of wetlands in the southeast has been spotted near Lake Washington. Nutria are semi-aquatic, chocolate-colored rodents that can weigh more than 20 pounds and eat one-quarter of their weight a day in crops and plants of all varieties. Also called coypu, or swamp rats, they burrow through marshes and levies, and females can produce more than a dozen offspring a year. A trapper recently caught nine along the shores of Lake Washington. Two University of Washington students are studying the rodents to determine where they...

Associated Press EL PASO — An airman who was training at Fort Bliss for deployment to Iraq died of a deadly virus linked to rodents, an Air Force official said today. Senior Airman Leonard Hankerson Jr., 24, a security forces patrolman, died Feb. 11 at William Beaumont Army Hospital in El Paso. He was assigned to a squadron at Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, Ariz. Autopsy results confirmed last week that Hankerson had hantavirus, said Lt. Col. John Paradis, a Luke Air Force Base spokesman. The disease is transmitted to humans when they inhale particles of dried urine, feces...

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - A New Jersey man who recently returned from a trip to Liberia has died of an illness that had not been detected in the United States since 1989 but is common in West Africa, state health officials said Thursday. The man died of Lassa fever, a virus spread through rat droppings or urine that can be passed to other people through bodily fluids but not through causal contact, officials said. The 38-year-old man from the Trenton area was not identified by authorities. It is unlikely that other passengers on the man's flight back from Africa or...

The city of Santa Monica, Calif., is in trouble with environmentalists for the way they eradicated their squirrel population: An unannounced, weekend fumigation of the animals' burrows under Palisades Park. City officials had debated the rodent overpopulation issue for more than a year, trying to find a solution which involved neither poison nor pain, reports KCBS-TV's Jennifer Sabih.

Some Cook County employees are treating their workspaces like a pigpen -- and that's why they've got rodent problems. That's the essence of a news release issued Tuesday by Chicago's Streets & Sanitation Department that set off a war of words with Cook County Clerk David Orr. On Monday, the Sun-Times reported complaints from clerk employees working in the basement of the City Hall/Cook County building who said they've been seeing rats in the office. But a surprise city inspection Tuesday turned up no sign of rats. Instead, city officials said, they found mice feces as well as "open food"...

You might not be mindful of them when you cut through alleys to get home from work or school. You might not be thinking about them when you order food in your favorite restaurant. But rats could be frequenting the same restaurants and walkways you do. There are an estimated 500,000 of these furry fiends scurrying around the city, according to a city spokesman. Believe it or not, that's an improvement. "A few years ago we had 1.5 million rats, and 20 years ago there were 6 or 7 million," said Matt Smith, spokesman for the Department of Streets and...

A DeKalb County health inspector found a frozen guinea pig tucked in a freezer at La Sabrosa restaurant, 2857 Buford Highway. According to the inspector's report, the chef said the guinea pig was for his personal consumption, but he could not remember where he bought it or produce a receipt. Inspector Karen Nguyen noted that she "advised operators to keep receipts for all purchases. Any food used for personal consumption must be stored separate and labeled 'personal foods.' " The restaurant scored an 87 on the December inspection, up from its previous 79. An Internet search reveals that, yes indeed,...