After fire and floods, Aussie farmers suffer devastating mouse plague
After surviving years of crippling drought, farmers in eastern Australia are locked in a months-long struggle with hordes of mice that are pouring through fields and devouring hard-earned crops.
Farmer Col Tink runs on the broom to skittle a huge selection of roving mice toward a makeshift professional trap - essentially a sizable tub of water where they drown.
This is a brutally simple try to slow the plague that has engulfed his farm - near to the rural town of Dubbo - and a large number of other farms enjoy it across eastern Australia.
But Tink’s efforts have barely made a dent. Mice continue steadily to chew through grain and hay stocks while anything remotely edible remains under regular attack.
Skin-crawling videos of writhing rodent masses have been shared all over the world along with reports of bitten hospital patients, destroyed machinery and swarms running across roads en masse.
The plague is the latest in a string of disasters to strike farmers in Australia. A years-long drought was accompanied by months of devastating bushfires from late 2019, before welcome rains became damaging floods in a number of regions.
“My dad’s still alive; he’s 93, and it’s the worst 3 years he’d ever observed in his lifetime, and I think it’s probably the worst mouse plague he’s seen too,” said Tink, who mainly farms Brahman cattle.
But the prospect of this plague continuing through the southern hemisphere’s winter makes him fearful for preparations ahead of the next dry spell - which is always on the horizon.
“If we don’t get yourself a real cold and fairly wet winter, I’m simply a tiny bit worried what’s likely to happen in the spring,” the 65-year-old told AFP.
