The biggest plague of mice in decades continues to sweep across southeast Australian states in biblical proportions. And now that no more food is left, they start cannibalizing…
According to reporting system Mouse Alert, areas around the southeast coast are seeing high mouse abundance, with Victoria, New South Wales and Brisbane hit the hardest. Mice numbers have been high for months, but the problem is getting worse as the country heads into winter, and the mice are seeking shelter indoors.
“People are putting the legs of their beds in buckets or pots of water, but the mice are still climbing curtains, jumping onto their beds and biting them,” said the vice president of the New South Wales Farmers’ Association Xavier Martin.
“When they run out of food, when they run out of seeds to eat they start cannibalising, they start eating each other,” added Martin. “They’re pretty disgusting animals and of course they’ve taken over a lot of our homes, our sheds, our vehicles, our tractors, we’ve had machinery burn.”
Bumper crops have left farms with a lot of grain for the mice to feast on, and with an abundance of food available they have bred at higher than usual levels. Mice can breed from around the age of six weeks, and give birth to litters of up to 10 pups every 19 to 21 days.
A mild and moist summer gave mice ideal conditions for the mice to breed, which continued through the fall. There is no break in pup production.
The infestations have got so bad that the deputy prime minister declared this week that “the only good mouse is a dead mouse,” while the New South Wales government purchased 5,000 liters of mice poison.
Mice seek shelter as winter arrives
With the animals seeking out shelter as winter approaches, CSIRO have advised people in urban areas to be on the look out for mice, too.
“People in urban areas should patch up holes in their home, cracks in the walls, roof spaces and where pipes come through the wall. Pack holes with steel wool or space invader. Mice can squeeze into very small spaces, but they won’t eat through steel wool. Put seals on doors,” they wrote, adding pet owners should clean up left-over food that might attract them.
Poison and cannibalism
For now, though the mice are threatening to invade Sydney, the problem is mainly limited to farms and rural areas. To tackle the problem, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority granted an emergency permit that allows grain baits to be covered in double-strength zinc phosphide to try and reduce numbers, as numbers have not been reducing as quickly as some had hoped.
“As they run out of food and cannibalise each other they do decline but in other places they are just absolutely exploding and its not thousands its billions,” said Martin.
“In my family farm we put out two billion baits mainly by aircraft, and we are only moderate sized farmers and they are all gone, the baits have all been all taken.”
Can you imagine the smell?
“The smell is rotten. The live smell of mice is terrible, but the dead smell’s ten times worse and so I’ve been baiting… which I don’t really like baiting because of the effects on the wildlife and that. I do live in a really nice area with lots of wildlife and that.
“But my morning ritual is to go out and I get a couple of hundred mice every night, I catch in buckets. The water bucket traps. I’ve got about 15 bait stations and I spend at least an hour every morning and every night picking up dead mice to reduce that risk of the wildlife getting hurt.“ [Yahoo, IFLScience]
Now subscribe to this blog to get more amazing news curated just for you right in your inbox on a daily basis (here an example of our new newsletter).
You can also follow us on Facebook and/ or Twitter. And, by the way you can also make a donation through Paypal. Thank you!
You should really subscribe to QFiles. You will get very interesting information about strange events around the world.
Australia is under the judgement of God!
its so obvious. Frosts that kill everything, locusts and grasshoppers that eat everything, drought causes famine, searing heat and fires that burn everything, covid and now Mice plagues!
Im out in the country coz we fled the corrupt cities to get away from it all but we’ve experienced all of this except the mice. fingers crossed and praying.
The only remedy is national repentance but with this “christian” Prime minister I cant see any national call to repentance.
Excuse me? It ain’t that bad…. some farm areas where they stock bulk grains and others for exports to such countries as the U.S…. Cities you don’t see many apart from dumpsters or rubbish tips… Or houses that should be demolished and the people moved out. Drought isn’t an issue either, that is foreign owned farmers that cry mercy cause they don’t understand our climate. The heat is lovely, great for growth in plants if managed well and isn’t all hot everywhere. Fires are set up by the land developers (private owned) so it gives them an excuse to clear out land, for new suburbs.
No one really likes our Prime Minister Slo-Mo and was put in power but a power shuffle for money laundering.
The same Australia that declared war on feral cats? And killed 2 million of them? That Australia, yes?
No? There is no “War on Cats” but there is a “War on control of money” like many corrupted nations.
Didn’t they use poisoned sausages to control a “plague of cats” a short while ago? The answer is, YES! So how’s that working out for them? Duh,whodaknown?
it seems that the Idea did not work out to well since the cat’s could kill the rats , talk about not thinking ahead of what could become a serious health problem as a decease’s it could cause or if we look at history this was the cause of black plague in Europe as I recall somewhere in the numbers of 20 million died as I recall that was over a 4 or 5 year span of time , so they better kick everything in high gear and get started Now before it gets anymore out of hand then it already is .
https://www.wandering.wa.gov.au/documents/460/1080-poison-risk
No that is a poison used through out the country, to kill off feral animals from farms. It isn’t really something people approve of and is designed to keep the feral population controlled (which aren’t native)…. native animals tend to eat other things but sometimes die when they eat a carcass of an animal that ate 1080.
Flame thrower and use the mice for fertilizer after.
U S A …. U S A ….. is that what you were chanting in your head, whilst typing that comment?
Well, if they have to air drop billions of baits, then it’s FUBAR. Those folks already know it will kill off more than mice.
Bullsnakes— breed ’em, and set ’em loose. That’s my recommendation.
*Take the dead mice, and burn ’em or compost.
We could say that about China and India, drop some chocolate coated poison bait. Might help in the future? ahahaha *ooops*