实战口语情景对话 第848期:Island Invasion 岛屿入侵

Nick: In Australia, there's a lot of snakes as well. Is there snakes in Guam?
尼克：澳大利亚有很多蛇。关岛有蛇吗？

Cheryl: Yeah, there's plenty of snakes in Guam, one of which is very famous. It's the brown tree snake. Now the brown tree snake was brought over to Guam a long time ago in cargo ships when it hid in the cargo and the cargo was unloaded onto the docks of Guam. So when these brown tree snakes were accidentally released onto Guam's soil, they subsequently destroyed most of Guam's bird population. Can you believe that?
谢丽尔：有，关岛有很多蛇，其中有种蛇非常有名。那就是棕树蛇。很久以前，货船将棕树蛇带到了关岛，棕树蛇藏在货船里，货船在关岛码头卸货。这些棕树蛇在无意中被放到了关岛的土地上，棕树蛇使关岛的鸟类数量大幅减少。你能相信吗？

Nick: That's amazing. Yeah. Introductions like that can cause disasters for wildlife.
尼克：这太不可思议了。好像它们给野生动物带来灾难。

Cheryl: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And because these brown tree snakes destroyed most of the bird life on Guam we've lost a lot of beautiful tropical birds that used to live on Guam. Another thing that I can think of that was introduced to Guam, but isn't a wild animal, is a wild plant and we call it a Japanese Bonsai Leaf, actually. And I believe Bonsai means suicide or something in Japanese but what these leaves do is they grow and grow and they look like vines so they cover loads and loads of trees and good wildlife that are out there. I mean, plant life and they keep these plant life from growing because they essentially ambush them and keep sunlight from ever reaching them.
谢丽尔：对，没错。棕树蛇毁灭了关岛的大部分鸟类，我们失去了很多以前在关岛生活的漂亮的热带鸟类。我想到了另一样引进关岛的东西，不过不是野生动物，而是野生植物，我们称之为日本盆景叶。我认为盆景这个词在日语里的意思是自杀，这些盆景叶子会持续增长，看起来就像藤蔓一样，它们会覆盖住大量树木和野生植物。它们会导致其它植物无法生长，因为它们会遮住这些植物，让其它植物无法接触阳光。

Nick: That's really interesting.
尼克：这太有意思了。

Cheryl: Yeah, so if you can imagine a building covered completelyin really thick vine, that's how these Japanese Bonsai leaves work. They completely shroud and cover all of the good plant life that we have on Guam. So we've lost a lot of good plant life, beautiful different types of leaves, and bushes, flowers. So in addition to losing all of our bird life, we've also lost a lot of our plant life to this introduction of a foreign plant species in Guam.
谢丽尔：对，你可以想象一下一座大楼完全被厚厚的藤蔓遮住的样子，这就是这些日本盆景叶做的事情。它们会把关岛的植物完全盖住。所以我们又失去了很多好的植物，失去了多种漂亮的树木、灌木和花朵。除了失去大量鸟类以外，我们还因为外国植物引进关岛而失去了我们的植物。