Farmers in Australia have been forced to sleep with their beds placed in water buckets to avoid being eaten by mice while sleeping.
For months, millions of mice have ravaged and invaded people’s homes in the eastern part of the country.
The state of New South Wales in particular is experiencing the museum invasion of the times.
– People have been bitten in their beds. They have been lying there and been bitten, says farmer Kodi Bradi.
The people of the state try to kill as many mice as possible, but with little help.
Two mice can produce as many as 500 offspring each season.
– It destroys people’s social and emotional well-being. You get completely exhausted, says Kodi Brady, who is a farmer in New South Wales.
Enormous destruction
The museum invasion has caused enormous damage to the farms – damages worth several million dollars.
Among other things, the mice eat the farmers’ crops and attack the grain silos.
The small rodents have also found their way into hospitals, schools and forced grocery stores to store their food in sealed containers.
It is the large amount of rain that the eastern edge of Australia has experienced in the last six months that, among other things, has created ideal conditions for the mice.
– MOUSE PARTY: Eric Fishpool lifts a tarp that covers stored grain while mice run around his farm near Tottenham, Australia May 19, 2021. Photo: Rick Rycroft
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Jumps up in the beds
– People put their legs on the beds in buckets and pots of water, but the mice climb strangers in curtains and jump up in the beds and bite them.
This is what another Australian grain farmer, Xavier Martin, told the newspaper The Telegraph.
Several videos published on social media recently have shown that this is a problem in many places in the country.
– As winter approaches, the hungry rodents also seek shelter in people’s houses, says the professional cleaner Sue Hodge to The Independent.
She has recently spent her days in a small town, a four-hour drive west of Sydney.
There she works to remove the mice from people’s homes, and removes mouse feces from both kitchens, children’s rooms and even beds.
– MOUSE PEST: Large areas of land in Australia’s New South Wales state are threatened by a mouse plague which the authorities describe as “completely unique.” Photo: Rick Rycroft
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Uses steel wool
In her own home, she has covered every nook and cranny of the house with steel wool to prevent the mice from crawling in.
She prefers the “snap back” model which ensures a quick death.
But the problem has become so big that the authorities in the region will now use some of the strongest mouse-killing chemicals to get rid of the rodents.
Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall in New South Wales says they have now applied for emergency approval from the authorities, of a type of poison that is four times stronger than what is already on the market.
– We need something similar napalm to crack these mice,
On Thursday, one of the policemen said that they had obtained 5,000 liters of the poison, which is so strong that it will kill the rodents with just one dose.
However, it has caused concern among others, who are afraid that the poison will damage food crops and kill local wildlife.
– Trying to count the number of mice would be like trying to count the stars in the sky, said CSIRO researcher Steve Henry, who is described as Australia’s foremost expert on mouse plague.
Between 800 and 1,000 mice per hectare are considered plague, according to the agency.
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