Hawaii? I dunno... We destroyed 13,000 from Johnston Island, which is 800 miles from Hawaii but we still have nearly 90,000 more stockpiled in 4 different states. All these were in storage and not planted as far as I know. Did I miss something?

One of the main reasons they use Gambian rats isn't their smarts, it's their stupidity. They don't develop the same Pavlovian tricks that dogs do.

Over time, an explosive-sniffing dog will learn that finding a spot on the ground will get it a bite of food, and the rate of false positives goes up like crazy. Every dog has to be retired after a fairly short time. Similar things happen with drug dogs at the airport, although vastly more money goes into training them.

One of the more promising technologies for finding mines is a genetically engineered flower that will grow a different colour in the presence of the volatile organic compounds given off by explosives.

You airdrop ten thousand seeds, wait a week, and over each mine is a big red flower, in a sea of yellow ones.

My mother was married at Hickam AFB and lived on Oahu in off-base housing. My father was assigned to a group that sampled radioactive clouds, which was pretty big deal stuff in the 1950s. At that time there were beaches that were still restricted because of leftover WWII landmines.

I don't know why I found this so funny.......
but I really laughed when I read it.

Perhaps the image of a 1950s housewife standing in front of her cupboards with a puzzled expression on her face,

"Sorry honey, looks like its squirrels again!"

minefield practical jokes
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...C/pop_joke.jpg