In a field about 60km west of the town of Chokwe on the Limpopo River in Mozambique, a large rat scurries along the ground, its nose and whiskers twitching. It stops, sniffs excitedly and then scratches at the ground.
The rat is wearing a harness to which a leash is attached. Its handler, clad in bomb-proof gear, pulls it over to the side with the leash and rewards it with a piece of banana. Meanwhile, another person in a protective outfit goes over to the spot where the rat stopped and scratched. He carefully digs up an anti-personnel mine.
The animal is an African pouched rat - all of 75cm long. It is a prototype of the latest weapon being developed to neutralise the millions of unexploded landmines across Africa and the rest of the world.
They have killed or maimed thousands of people, especially in Mozambique, where an estimated half-million mines are still buried, and millions more in Angola.
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=31&art_id=ct20030810102700169R320623&set_id=1Sad story because how could we let the Power Elite do this to our Earth?
I've seen shows where rats have as much personality as a dog. But of course we don't want innocent people stepping on these. Why arent the people who gave the orders to put them there the ones charged with removing them? This should become an International Law. (And if the person who gave the orders to lay the mines is dead then their relatives must remove the mines.) I'd have this world cleaned up really fast!
http://darker0darker.tripod.com/
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