NBC NEWS - SYDNEY — After one of its worst wildfire seasons and a global pandemic, Australia is now facing its latest end-of-days challenge: a “monumental” plague of mice.
Millions of rodents are running amok in parts of Australia’s eastern states, with residents sharing horror encounters on a daily basis.
With an epicenter in rural New South Wales, farmers have uploaded videos to social media of mice blanketing their land, damaging crops and taking up residence inside homes.
Guy Roth, who works at a sprawling University of Sydney research farm near the New South Wales town of Narrabri, said mice had overtaken the property.
“I know we had two mice per square meter in our cropping paddocks at the peak … [so] if I have the math right, it’s 20 million mice. That’s more mice than the population of most big cities,” he said.
Roth said at one point he and his family were catching and disposing of around 100 mice each day inside their house and offices.
“They’re all around the house. Every time you open a drawer, you’re potentially going to find one,” he said. “You’ll be sitting at the desk and a mouse will run across it.”
He said the mice were eating the cotton crops as well as grain stored in silos.
Roth, who has spent his whole life in regional and rural Australia, said this was “the worst mice plague I’ve ever seen.”
“They certainly smell. That’s what my memory of this is going to be — the smell,” he said. “The smell of the dead mice in and around the house and the farm.”.....READ MORE
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