Many years ago I was a participant in a writers group. I did not write the great American novel, but we had a lot of nice people and some did get material published.
In one sense, we all did. One of the group knew a publisher and that got us the task of writing tales involving rats. I did not have a good story to tell, so I converted a standard chicken casserole dish to a rat casserole recipe. Yum!
Item #1: Will, Ahu, Wai – dogs all 
The three dogs listed helped rid South Georgia Island of rats.
Two of these can be seen in this LINK.
More story and photos here:
LINK 2
I’ve had to refresh that one to get the photos.
Here is a photo of one of the birds in the story:
South Georgia pipit
I recall reading about this project about 4 or 5 years ago.
Nothing since, until this week.
Item #2: They work for peanuts 
A Belgian nonprofit has found African giant pouched rats are much better at detecting old buried landmines than people or dogs.
Item #3: Just a photo
Place: Hawaii.
I hope you do not have relatives or friends living in the area where magma is flowing. These housing sites should never have been allowed where they are, and it is going to cost a lot of tax dollars before the residents are resettled. 
Nevertheless, I thought the photo with the gate was priceless!
Item #4: A captioned photo
The Russians have been in the news quite a bit. If you are aware of them being blamed for many things – and now you are – you will get a chuckle:
And that, for this week, is the not so nasty news.
John