You may have heard the saying keep the rooster out of the hen house. You should also keep the rats out of the tiny secluded island. An Alaskan island is panicking over the possibility of a rat loose on the island. People call the area the "Galapagos of the North." It has a population of 350 people.
St. Paul Island residents are on a mouse hunt for a possible rat. They're not even sure that it exists. For three months, they've been hunting for the rodent. This comes after someone claims they saw one in June. You see, rats are not native to the island. Locals fear that the rodent may have came from a boat or plane.
They fear the rat could harm its seabird population. So they want to protect their birds. "It's just the abundance of wildlife that we hear stories or read historical accounts of, but really seldom see in kind of our modern age," said Donald Lyons, director of conservation science with the National Audubon Society's Seabird Institute. "And so [St. Paul] really is a place where I've felt the wonder, the spectacle of nature."
Rat On Island
As experts note, rats reproduce quickly. One day you have one rat, then two, then a swarm. Rats have overtaken other islands, eating their bird eggs.
"We know — because we've seen this on other islands and in other locations in Alaska and across the world — that rats absolutely decimate seabird colonies, so the threat is never one that the community would take lightly," Lauren Divine, director of the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island's ecosystem conservation office, told the Associated Press.
It can take years and millions of dollars to eliminate a rat infestation. So wildlife officials want to prevent one before it starts. They started setting up traps as well as trail camera. However, no one has seen any signs of a possible rat on the island. It's possible that they are fretting for nothing. But it's also possible that they just haven't found it yet.
In 2018, it took them 10 months to find it on the island.
