It’s Way Past Time to Reconsider Our Priorities.

Guam is a colorful and interesting island far out in the Western Pacific. There’s a lot to see and do there, especially if you’re of an age to be interested in World War Two history. There was a great deal of bloody fighting on Guam. Today, it’s quite a lovely, very tropical island and it attracts a good number of tourists, many from Japan.

But there are no birds on Guam.

The culprit is the brown tree snake. It has no natural enemies and reproduces prolifically. And, as the name implies, it climbs trees and eats birds’ eggs … all the birds’ eggs.

That’s not all the trouble this terrible pest causes. The damn snakes also climb utility poles, slither from one wire to another and … ZZZAPP! There are power outages every couple of days occurring all over the island. The snakes are only mildly poisonous, but can deliver a painful bite nevertheless and often find their way into houses where kids and babies are bitten.

We have a great many birds in Hawaii, many quite beautiful and unique to these islands. There is constant concern that the brown tree snake will find its way here from Guam … hidden away in the wheel well of a jet plane or in a container after being offloaded from a freighter.

For years, the federal government has provided money to pay for some additional agricultural inspectors whose primary job is to inspect planes and ships coming from Guam, making sure no stowaway brown tree snakes get to Hawaii.

As part of their cost-cutting effort, Republicans in Congress have recommended cutting those funds — the money being used to pay those few extra inspectors — as wasteful and unnecessary.

I guess it’s all question of priorities, isn’t it. Well, in this case, Republican priorities suck!