Over 16,000 Dead Bloated Rats Drift Ashore Following Hurricane Isaac
If you plan on heading down to the beach in the areas where Hurricane Isaac came through you might want to take a pair of nose plugs with you as it seems that one of the side effects of the hurricane has been the inundation of dead bloated rats coming ashore – 16,000, and counting, of them.
According to the report in Reuters this morning Hancock County has hired contractors to clean up the mess and are expected to continue for another week. In neighboring Harrison County they are doing the work themselves and so far have collects almost 16 tons of dead rats from the shoreline.
Although they’re smelly and disgusting, the dead rats pose no health risk to humans, said Brigid Elchos of the Mississippi Board of Animal Health.
Mississippi also dealt with dead rats after Hurricanes Katrina and Gustav, but officials said the current situation seems especially bad.
The beaches are closed to the public, but Yarborough said people have come anyway to see the littered beaches. The visitors usually don’t stay long, possibly because the odor is intense on the shore and discernible from up to three miles away, he said.
Rats aren’t the only dead animals they have found as it seems that workers have also found dead hogs, deer, coyotes, snakes, and rabbits.
image courtesy Reuters/Michael Spooneybarger
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Steven Hodson Steven has been around the tech world long enough to see most of the stuff we think of cool happen before which leads to a certain bit of cynicism that has contributed to him being known as the cranky old fart of the Internet. Besides sharing some of the goodness that he finds with you here at 42x you can also find him curating some digital goodness at Winextra (tech type stuff) and Rotten Gumdrops (for your daily dose of WTF).
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