"This is an exciting moment. I will continue to kill them"

So that you're sure to know that the world is as fucked as we left it yesterday night.

"This is an exciting moment. I will continue to kill them."

-- Mokhairul Islam of Bangladesh, a farmer who was awarded first prize of a color television set for killing some 83,450 rats ahead of a month-long nationwide campaign to kill millions more, with the aim of protecting crops and reducing the need for food imports. Islam, 40, killed the rats in the past nine months in Gazipur district near the South Asian country's capital, Dhaka. He collected their tails for proof. "I am so happy to get this honor," Islam told The Associated Press after receiving a 14-inch television and a certificate amid cheers at an official ceremony packed with 500 farmers and officials. "I had no idea that the government gives prizes for this." Officials say the impoverished nation imports some 3 million tons of food annually, while the Bangladesh Ministry of Agriculture estimates that rodents annually destroy 1.5 million to 2 million tons of food. "We can cut the import of food by at least half if we can succeed in this year's campaign," said Wais Kabir, executive chairman of the Bangladesh Agriculture Research Council, as cited by AP. He asked all Bangladeshis – especially farmers – to take on the killing mission as a sport. The government has said it will train mainly farmers and students for this year's campaign. "Killing rats is not that easy, it needs training," Kabir said. Islam said he mainly used poison to kill the rats at his poultry farm, and that the cull has paid off as the rodents now scavenged less. "Previously I needed 33 sacks of poultry feed per week, now I need less than 30," Islam said. Last year, the UN World Food Program launched a months-long food aid project in the country's southeast after a plague of rats devoured rice crops.