7-foot statue to a legend

 7-foot statue to a legend

Nick Iluzada

A new monument has been erected to honor someone the public has no problem accepting as both a rat and a hero all at once. That someone is Magawa, the African giant pouched rat who sniffed out 100 land mines for the nonprofit Apopo, which trains and deploys the rodents to detect the explosives so that they can be safely cleared. Magawa died in 2022, but in his five-year career for the nonprofit, he distinguished himself as one of the best to ever do it. According to the Washington Post: He could search an area the size of a tennis court in 20 minutes by himself. It would take a human several days. The little guy cleared 1.52 million square feet of land, equivalent to ~26 football fields. He detected “dozens” of land mines during his tenure. Magawa retired in 2021 and mentored some other rats for his encore career. The statue has been placed in Cambodia, where Magawa completed his life’s work. The nation has a goal to be land mine free by 2030. An estimated 6 million land mines remain there, according to Apopo.