RODENT INVASIONS
Australia is hit by a monumental mouse plague, while UK dormice thrive
MOUSE PLAGUE IN OZ
Australia is in the grip of a plague of mice, described by Steve Henry, of Australia’s national science agency CSIRO, as “monumental”. The plague, which is devastating agriculture along the eastern seaboard, threatens to reach Sydney by the end of this year, with experts warning city dwellers to “rodentproof your food”. Australia suffers periodic mouse explosions when the environmental conditions suit them, as a single breeding pair of mice can produce 500 offspring in a year. They start breeding at six weeks old and can have litters of up to 10 pups every 20 days.
Even by Australian standards, though, this is an apocalyptically bad year. Video from Australian farms shows torrents of rodents raining from grain silos, swarming across roads, and destroying everything before them. One grain farmer said that on his local roads you could hardly see the tarmac for the fur of squashed animals. A run of dry years was broken in 2020, creating ideal conditions for the mice: farmers had bumper crops, there was plenty of water and good shelter. Farmers who did manage to harvest their crops have had them completely consumed in store, while many have not even got that far, with mice stripping fields before farmers can get to them.
It is not just Australia’s farms that have been impacted by the mice; homes and public buildings can be wrecked and people have had their sleep disturbed by mice biting them in bed. John Southon, Principal of Trundle Central School in New South Wales, said: “Your furniture is
She found nests in the cushions and mice in every cupboard
eaten… all the insulation in the air conditioning systems. They’ve eaten the wires out of the roof of the school, they’ve eaten parts of the power board in the principal’s residence.” Louise McCabe of Tallimba, 500km (310 miles) west of Sydney, went away for four weeks and returned to find thousands of mice in her house. “They’ve chewed through the carpet and the wooden floor, the oven is no longer functioning... they ate the insulation of our dishwasher,” she said. She found nests in the couch cushions and mice in every cupboard. They had eaten laminate and destroyed chipboard with their urine, utterly wrecking the kitchen, and the family’s clothes were completely soaked in mouse pee.
The Australian government is distributing bromadiolone, an extremely strong mouse poison and offering compensation payments for those worst affected, but this is being condemned as too little, too late, and significant concerns are being raised about the environmental impact of the poison on birds of prey that eat mice. Australians hope that, with winter arriving shortly, the weather will be cold enough to stop the onslaught in its tracks and reduce the mouse population to manageable levels once more. 29 Mar; Guardian, 14 May; Independent, Sky News, 15 May; 7news.com.au, 23 May; dailymail.co.uk, 26 May 2021.
DOUBLE DORMICE IN UK
In its own quiet way, the UK, too, is experiencing a mouse plague. Edible dormice have doubled in numbers in Britain over the last 10 years and are starting to move into towns from their usual woodland habitat. A protected species, once prized by the Romans as a delicacy, they are much larger than the mice eating Australia. At 8in (20.3cm) long, plus a fluffy tail, they are twice the size of the common dormouse. The creatures became established in the UK after six escaped from Lionel Rothschild’s private collection in Tring, Hertfordshire, in 1902. For a long time, they were confined to woods in Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire; however there are now an estimated 100,000 in the wild and they have spread to Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Essex, London, and Oxford. They have also taken to invading homes in considerable numbers, with a record 145 removed from one house in London. Elsewhere, they damaged a collection of classic cars when they got into the garage and gnawed cables and wires. The mice hibernate from November to May, and pest controller Paul Bates said: “When they wake... It is not unusual to find them in airing cupboards, storerooms or kitchens, searching for food.” More than 200 have been culled by pest controllers so far this year, more than in the whole of 2020. S.Mirror, 22 May 2021.