Mouse plague destroys crops, appliances
New South Wales farmer Chris Kemp told Australia's ABC News that the region had never experienced a mice plague as bad as this. He remarked that mice were everywhere, from fields to houses to sheds. "This is probably the worst I have seen," he said. "When you mow your lawn, you get 50 or 100 mice running away from you."An unexpected relief came from birds of prey such as falcons and magpies, which perched on power lines waiting for the mice to leave their hiding places, Kemp said. But the predatory birds were not enough to quell the rat infestation, as the farmer had to use gallons of rat bait every week to save his crops.
"We had to bait all our cropping country just before harvest. The mice were starting to eat the grain and eat the pods on the canola," Kemp said.
Emma Henderson was also dealing with the plague in her home in the town of Merriwa. She said that mice made a nest around her oven and pulled the insulation to make themselves more comfortable, causing the appliance to overheat and trip.
"I pulled the oven out with my son, and we found their little nest and a whole heap of insulation down the back of the wall, so I lost my oven, and the smell, oh the smell," she said. The mice also destroyed her freezer, juicer and air fryer, leaving her with a bill of more than 1,000 Australian dollars ($777). (Related: New York City is being forced to deploy an army of 10,000 cleanup workers in response to worsening problems with trash and rats.)
The growing mice population was the result of the rains that pummeled the region after a long period of drought, according to Thackray. She said that the drought killed the animals that preyed on the rats. So when it started raining, the rats flourished alongside the crops that fed the four-legged pests.
The journalist added that mice normally stop breeding early in the year, but the critters continued to multiply. A cold snap or rain might make things worse, she opined.
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