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Mouse Plagues (Swarming Mice; Australia & E. Asia)

Merle

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 10, 2017
Messages
71
When I was a kid about 60 years back my farther came home one night and
said he had been walking home and had he passed a doorway a copper dragged him
in told him "the rats are moving" next thing the st is full of rat's wall to wall all
heading the same way like a river, once they had gone he carried on home and
did not see another rat, he did say that he thought he would have been in some
danger if the cop had not pulled him into the doorway, I have never seen anything
like that but don't doubt he saw what he said but have never heard of it since,
though the cop acting as he did makes me think he had seen it before.

Living in Australia and having lived in the remote isolated hot desert ouback for years I can easily believe that story. However, for us it's not rats, but on occassions, mice plagues and they come out by the droves at night looking for food. With nothing much for them to eat where I lived, they then ended up eating all the books, the paper work and anything which they deemed edible which incidently was a lot of things including plastic, soap etc.

It didn't happen often, but when it did it was horrible and very hard to sleep at night with mice wanting to crawl around all over the place including you while you slept. There was never enough rat traps or poison to buy because it was long all sold out and anyway, the closest shops were over a 3 hour drive there and then another 3 hours plus back.

One night a friend who was visiting and hadn't seen this before had bandges on his leg from bad cuts only to wake up during the night to find the mice had eaten away not only a part of his bandages, but were nibbling at his flesh. The only reason he was so slow to notice was because he was drunk, totally out of it when he went to sleep that night... poor buggar, he was in a pretty bad state though we did tell him that's what happens when you drink with mice... Here's a recent picture of a mice plague...
.
.
mice-plague.jpg
 
There was a documentary of some sorts on UK tv about mice swarms in Australia
a few years back little buggers eat everything.
amazing.
 
Mouse plagues are a recurrent environmental / population related event in Australia and East Asia.

Mouse plagues in Australia have occurred several times throughout parts of Australia since wild mice were introduced by European colonists along with the First Fleet in 1788. Australia and China are the two countries in the world where plagues of mice are known to occur.

Mouse plagues occur southern and eastern Australia usually in the grain-growing regions around every four years. Aggregating around food sources during plagues, the density of mice can reach up to 3,000 mice per hectare.

SOURCE (With Notes About Historical Mouse Plagues):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_plagues_in_Australia
 
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Southeast Australia has been overrun by an ongoing plague of mice, which have attacked livestock, invaded residential homes and depleted supplies of mouse-killing accessories.

NOTE: Video below starts innocuously, but mouse-killing methods get a little...biblical...a few minutes in...


“If you start noticing them, the numbers can build up very, very quickly,” Councillor Reg Kidd, mayor of Orange, New South Wales, told Prime7 of the pestilence. Orange is one of many New South Wales towns that have been overrun by the the opportunistic vermin over the past two days.

What’s being described as a bone-chilling “carpet of mice” appears to be tied to the weather. Rain early last year may have led to a breeding frenzy — followed by a drought that potentially helped the populations flourish, said one store owner who has sold out of traps.

https://nypost.com/2021/03/10/rodent-plague-leaves-town-covered-in-carpet-of-mice/

maximus otter
 
Southeast Australia has been overrun by an ongoing plague of mice, which have attacked livestock, invaded residential homes and depleted supplies of mouse-killing accessories.

NOTE: Video below starts innocuously, but mouse-killing methods get a little...biblical...a few minutes in...


“If you start noticing them, the numbers can build up very, very quickly,” Councillor Reg Kidd, mayor of Orange, New South Wales, told Prime7 of the pestilence. Orange is one of many New South Wales towns that have been overrun by the the opportunistic vermin over the past two days.

What’s being described as a bone-chilling “carpet of mice” appears to be tied to the weather. Rain early last year may have led to a breeding frenzy — followed by a drought that potentially helped the populations flourish, said one store owner who has sold out of traps.

https://nypost.com/2021/03/10/rodent-plague-leaves-town-covered-in-carpet-of-mice/

maximus otter

Hmmm. Remember the 2001 film Cats and Dogs? The cats promised Mice the continent of Australia if they joined in their fight against dogs.
 
Southeast Australia has been overrun by an ongoing plague of mice, which have attacked livestock, invaded residential homes and depleted supplies of mouse-killing accessories.

NOTE: Video below starts innocuously, but mouse-killing methods get a little...biblical...a few minutes in...


“If you start noticing them, the numbers can build up very, very quickly,” Councillor Reg Kidd, mayor of Orange, New South Wales, told Prime7 of the pestilence. Orange is one of many New South Wales towns that have been overrun by the the opportunistic vermin over the past two days.

What’s being described as a bone-chilling “carpet of mice” appears to be tied to the weather. Rain early last year may have led to a breeding frenzy — followed by a drought that potentially helped the populations flourish, said one store owner who has sold out of traps.

https://nypost.com/2021/03/10/rodent-plague-leaves-town-covered-in-carpet-of-mice/

maximus otter
Whist there is a mouse plague as described in the text the video is actually from 1984.
 
Similar conditions causing mouse plagues can occur now and then on a smaller scale and incidental basis elsewhere in the world. One example occurred in 2020 in a rural region of Germany. Such incidents aren't as endemic and cyclical as (e.g.) Australia's mouse plagues.
Plagues of field mice decimating crops, say German farmers

Large swathes of Germany’s farmland are being decimated by plagues of field mice leading to significant crop loss, according to the country’s national farming association.

In some parts of the country, a quarter of the arable land is affected, leading to calls for compensation as well as a relaxation on rules governing the use of pesticides. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ield-mice-decimating-crops-say-german-farmers
 
One night a friend who was visiting and hadn't seen this before had bandges on his leg from bad cuts only to wake up during the night to find the mice had eaten away not only a part of his bandages, but were nibbling at his flesh. The only reason he was so slow to notice was because he was drunk, totally out of it when he went to sleep that night... poor buggar, he was in a pretty bad state though we did tell him that's what happens when you drink with mice...

Reminds me of the rat attacks in Paul Brand's book The Gift of Pain.*

Sufferers from Hansen's in poorer areas would 'lose' fingers and toes overnight, the digits mysteriously disappearing while the sufferers were asleep.

Brand personally sat next to sufferers' beds in their huts overnight and watched them. He saw rats climb onto their beds and nibble their fingers and toes.

The Hansen's disease caused peripheral neuropathy which stopped the patient feeling pain so they were not alerted and the rats were free to eat.

Brand's solution was to issue each sufferer with a cat which slept in their bedroom and guarded them. This worked well and the cats were treated as treasured family members.


*A fascinating read. Brand was the son of medical missionaries in India. He trained as a doctor and worked with patients with Hansen's disease (leprosy) and India.

Nobody in richer countries was much interested in the condition until Brand pointed out resemblances between it and diabetes, the 'disease of affluence'.
Both conditions cause peripheral neuropathy. Brand lectured American diabetes research institutions on the treatments he used on Hansen's sufferers and his funding increased.
 
Here's a report on how stressful a mouse plague can be ...
‘No one ever forgets living through a mouse plague’: the dystopia facing Australian rural communities, explained by an expert

Imagine constantly living with mice. Every time you open a cupboard to get linen, clothes or food, mice have been or are still there. When you go to sleep they run across your bed and, in the morning, your first job is to empty traps filled with dead mice. And the stench of dead mice fill the streets.

Even the cats and dogs get sick of mice and stop chasing them.

This is the dystopian reality for many towns as, over recent months, mouse numbers in northern NSW and southern Queensland have risen to plague proportions, devastating summer crops and fodder storages. One farmer told me he’s removing 100 dead mice from his swimming pool each night. ...
FULL STORY: https://theconversation.com/no-one-...ral-communities-explained-by-an-expert-159339
 

Video shows mice 'raining' from sky as 'biblical plague' sweeps Australia

Australia has been gripped by a huge rodent plague of biblical proportions in recent weeks.


(FF to about 30 seconds for action)

ABC journalist Lucy Thackray shared a clip from Tracey Jones of just how bad it's got, showing mice raining from the sky when a silo was being cleaned out.

Dozens of dead and live rodents began falling along with the grains causing their bodies to pile up on the floor.

Some of the four-legged creatures manage to run off, but the pile quickly builds up with dead rodents.

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/horrifying-video-shows-mice-raining-24090384

maximus otter
 
Plague of mice + floods near Dubbo (NSW) = an impressive catch.

Dubbo Mice.jpg
 
Primary Question: Have you seen this happening @Mungoman ? :omg:

Supplementary Question: did you do this? :sherlock:
Yes,

I live about 70K's SW of Dubbo, so yes, this quantity is common. We don't see many during the day, but evenings and night is when they ravage. I store my chook feed in 44 gallon drums but even that isn't impervious to them. They will climb up onto the feedshed rafters and drop themselves down from the rafters into the feed drums so I placed old discs of a Baby Giant (disc plough) to stop them, but they manage to squeeze through the bolt holes (5/8th of an inch) so bricks are place over the holed.

The hardest thing is to go into local shops and see mice sauntering around as if they own the place, and you know that the shopkeeper will lift everything up at the end of the day so that their stock won't be damaged...and then replace it back on the shelves in the morning.

The best seller around here are buckets with ramps that have a roller suspended over the maw of the bucket - you then place peanut butter on the middle of the roller and in the morning there'll be 80 or so mice in the bottom of the bucket. It's suggested to put soapy water in the bottom so that the little mites fur won't trap airbubbles, and so, they'll drown quicker...

I'll be liffting all my carpets once this is finished and replacing them because they piss and shit everywhere. I have mice droppings all through my drawers - even on top of my dresser which is six feet high. I need to do a saturday morning clean every second day because of the mouse kak, and the fact that they leave muck trails wherever they go, so you can see their avenue of egress and exit.

I hear them run across the duvet and feel them run across the pillow of a night (everybody does). You need to strip the bed and make it of an evening otherwise you'll be sleeping in Mice droppings.

They take bites and make holes in your clothes in your drawers and make nests in those drawers that aren't used often... They've been selling sticky sheets which would have to be the most evil of things. The mouse runs across and their feet stick, so the mouse bites the paper etc.,etc.,etc...

They chew on anything electrical or copper cored, so they're causing fires and untold damage to Audio equipment...They are the giddy limit, but we've had drought for twenty years and the drought has broken, so it's to be expected in this country.

Water and it's availability triggers the breeding cycles in both Flora and Fauna in Australia, so...it's inevitable Frides.


The lead on to all this is that the Farmer and factory owner have been putting down baits and poisoned grain which is having an untold effect on the Birds here - both carrion eater and seed eater. My beautiful Galahs come home from foraging and drop dead, out of their trees overnight - also my crested pigeons are laid waste and our white eyed ravens too.

It gets a bit much if you think about it...so it's best not to think about it too often. Is it.
 
Thanks, Mungoman, for the lucid (though disturbing ... ) report describing how the mouse plague has affected everyone there.
 
Yes,

I live about 70K's SW of Dubbo, so yes, this quantity is common. We don't see many during the day, but evenings and night is when they ravage. I store my chook feed in 44 gallon drums but even that isn't impervious to them. They will climb up onto the feedshed rafters and drop themselves down from the rafters into the feed drums so I placed old discs of a Baby Giant (disc plough) to stop them, but they manage to squeeze through the bolt holes (5/8th of an inch) so bricks are place over the holed.

The hardest thing is to go into local shops and see mice sauntering around as if they own the place, and you know that the shopkeeper will lift everything up at the end of the day so that their stock won't be damaged...and then replace it back on the shelves in the morning.

The best seller around here are buckets with ramps that have a roller suspended over the maw of the bucket - you then place peanut butter on the middle of the roller and in the morning there'll be 80 or so mice in the bottom of the bucket. It's suggested to put soapy water in the bottom so that the little mites fur won't trap airbubbles, and so, they'll drown quicker...

I'll be liffting all my carpets once this is finished and replacing them because they piss and shit everywhere. I have mice droppings all through my drawers - even on top of my dresser which is six feet high. I need to do a saturday morning clean every second day because of the mouse kak, and the fact that they leave muck trails wherever they go, so you can see their avenue of egress and exit.

I hear them run across the duvet and feel them run across the pillow of a night (everybody does). You need to strip the bed and make it of an evening otherwise you'll be sleeping in Mice droppings.

They take bites and make holes in your clothes in your drawers and make nests in those drawers that aren't used often... They've been selling sticky sheets which would have to be the most evil of things. The mouse runs across and their feet stick, so the mouse bites the paper etc.,etc.,etc...

They chew on anything electrical or copper cored, so they're causing fires and untold damage to Audio equipment...They are the giddy limit, but we've had drought for twenty years and the drought has broken, so it's to be expected in this country.

Water and it's availability triggers the breeding cycles in both Flora and Fauna in Australia, so...it's inevitable Frides.


The lead on to all this is that the Farmer and factory owner have been putting down baits and poisoned grain which is having an untold effect on the Birds here - both carrion eater and seed eater. My beautiful Galahs come home from foraging and drop dead, out of their trees overnight - also my crested pigeons are laid waste and our white eyed ravens too.

It gets a bit much if you think about it...so it's best not to think about it too often. Is it.
What Australia needs is a load of cats...oh wait... :(
 
The Prison Service could invest in some cats.

A plague of mice that has ravaged vast swathes of eastern Australia has forced the evacuation of a prison while authorities repair gnawed electrical wiring and clear dead and decaying mice from walls and ceilings.

Around 200 staff and 420 inmates will be transferred from the Wellington Correctional Centre in rural New South Wales state to other prisons in the region during the next 10 days while cleaning and repairs take place, Corrective Services Commissioner Peter Severin said on Tuesday.

“The health, safety and wellbeing of staff and inmates is our number one priority so it’s important for us to act now to carry out the vital remediation work,” Mr Severin said.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/world/arid-40319519.html
 
True that.

Addendum: Gloves must come off - they're eating the spines out of my books.
The Prison Service could invest in some cats.

A plague of mice that has ravaged vast swathes of eastern Australia has forced the evacuation of a prison while authorities repair gnawed electrical wiring and clear dead and decaying mice from walls and ceilings.

Around 200 staff and 420 inmates will be transferred from the Wellington Correctional Centre in rural New South Wales state to other prisons in the region during the next 10 days while cleaning and repairs take place, Corrective Services Commissioner Peter Severin said on Tuesday.

“The health, safety and wellbeing of staff and inmates is our number one priority so it’s important for us to act now to carry out the vital remediation work,” Mr Severin said.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/world/arid-40319519.html
 
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