Florida now has giant African rats; one step from Australia

As we’ve said before, Florida has well-known problems with bears,  pythons, wild hogs and surfing snakes.  It has temporary problems with lions.  

That giant Florida rat is 9 pounds and 3 feet long.

That doesn’t count the alligators that are like everyone else’s raccoons. Now, it has been reported on Keys InfoNet  that on Grassy Key, Florida, there is a re-emergent problem with giant Gambian giant pouch rats.  There is an animal called a Gambian giant pouch rat, that AVERAGES three pounds, and three feet long, and can get up to NINE POUNDS.  A freaking nine pound rat that is three feet long and has a pouch.  It is like a nasty, nasty cousin of a possum (which is bad enough in its own right).  It was of course imported by someone who decided to breed them, then found no market for them, and instead of taking them to animal control, just let them out so they could breed themselves. Florida, when will you learn? This is the source of your python problem in the Everglades, and your New Jersey expatriate problem in Dade County (though they released themselves from captivity in Jersey, which is like a prison in itself). 

Florida, you have an invasive species problem. This is not what was meant on the Statue of Liberty when we implored the world to send their tired, their poor, their huddled masses yearning to be free.  It didn’t include pythons or giant Gambian rats, though technically it may have included people trying to escape New Jersey. 

The State Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is going to try an eradication program for the rats on Grassy Key. Let’s home they can find and eradicate the jackass who let them out in the first place. And, let’s hope the giant rats can’t swim, like Florida’s rattle snakes, or I may not be going back to Key West.