Iran reportedly uses snipers to tackle Tehran's rat problem
As Tehran's rodents become increasingly resistant to poison, Iran has a new way to combat the growing pest population: snipers.Snipers. For rats. I mean, I guess there are worse things, right? I guess that, for snipers that might operate in urban settings, this would be pretty damn good training and all that. And, given Iran's record on human rights, it's probably a good thing that they're giving their snipers something besides students and dissidents to shoot.
Ten sniper teams reportedly have been deployed to combat the capital city's growing rat population, which currently outnumbers Tehran's 12 million human residents, according to The National.
There's just something... EWWW about a rat population in a major city that's so bad they have to call in snipers. And for the rats to have developed resistance to poison? I wonder if they've gotten so big that conventional traps aren't working, either? Looks like it's time to take desperate measures - they may have to deploy the combat wombat if things get much worse. For now, though, we're counting on the Rat Patrol...
I do have to wonder if they call it "Squeal Team Six"...
That is all.
Another dispatch from...
(image courtesy of Robb Allen)
12 comments:
You do know that we get that show "Rat Bastards" here so I don't think the US can really comment on large mutant rats ...
Long ago - in another life, I found myself is a movie theater in an "emerging third world country". As I watch the movie a rat about the size of a dachshund lumbered across my feet. Damn he/she was a big critter. Would have needed an AR-10 to take that critter on . . . .
Actually employing snipers for getting rid of rodents is pretty common. There are a bunch of youtube videos of guys in the UK with suppressed .22s and .17s rifles taking on rat problems on farms.
Also I remember reading an article of Louisiana SWAT snipers taking on the nutria problems with .22s.
Some links:
http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/05/jeff_marksmen_still_targeting.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzjgWwqho-E
Yeah so it's not exactly uncommon. Pretty interesting though.
Just be glad they're not after Squirrels!
It's damn good training... Moving targets and all that... As kids we did that with open sight SS .22s :-)
Great I like Tehran's solutions better than ours... we would have commissioned a study on rat birth control.
Oh and your captcha has me thinking I'm a robot... way too hard!
Airguns. With night vision setup. Lots of videos of same on YouTube.
You never heard of the Nutria Roundup in New Orleans
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1817&dat=20030406&id=6XshAAAAIBAJ&sjid=YooFAAAAIBAJ&pg=5427,3447651
"Squeal Team Six"?
Go to your room! No ammo for you.
B.G.U.
Washington, DC actually has a law stating you can NOT break up a rat's family.
http://ricochet.com/main-feed/A-Politician-s-Guide-to-the-DC-Rat-Problem
My father retired from Boston Edison's Transmission & Distribution Underground Division, the bunch with the exploding manhole covers when below ground transformer vaults fail. He would tell us stories of aggressive rats the size of dogs with no fear of man in the manhole spaces that needed to be exterminated before they could work below ground. He also described the use of fire hoses to kill large wharf rats on the waterfront. They Edison crews were prohibited from using the word "rat" so that the public would not become alarmed, so they used the term "water bunnies" to describe the problem to dispatch. The rats were fond of gnawing on the equipment used by Edison, causing some of the transmission failures.
I don't see how deploying 60s era dirt bikes would help. But I'm all for it!
http://www.bikeexif.com/hodaka-combat-wombat
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