Attention Saint Patrick

Attention Saint Patrick is a science fiction short story by Murray Leinster, first published in 1960.

Legends do, of course, get somewhat distorted in the passage of time. In the future, the passage across space to other planets may cause a slight modification here and there ...

On a planet intended to be the overflow world for Earth's Ireland, an inspection team from Earth arrive to find out what's taking the original colonists so long to become self-supporting. The problem is tiny dinosaurs with carbide teeth that eat the colonists' iron. 

There is a solution. Large black snakes have been imported to hunt the beasts, but nobody wants the committee to see them, since there are no snakes in Ireland.

Things quickly go to hell.

Attention Saint Patrick was first published in Astounding Science Fiction, January, 1960.

Murray Leinster (1896-1975) was a pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an award-winning American writer of science fiction and alternate history. He wrote and published over 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays.