Alaska's Rat Island rat-free after 229 years
By Yereth Rosen
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, June 12 (Reuters) - Alaska's Rat Island is finally rat-free, 229 years after a Japanese shipwreck spilled rampaging rodents onto the remote Aleutian island, decimating the local bird population.
After dropping poison onto the island from helicopter-hoisted buckets for a week and a half last autumn, there are no signs of living rats and some birds have returned, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Holy flying fox! It's a nursery for orphaned bats