RUSSIA’S ARMY OF MICE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 27 December 1924, Page 14

RUSSIA’S ARMY OF MICE.

A DEVASTATING HORDE. Tlie correspondent of the Chicago Tribune wired from Riga in September's’: An extraordinary situation is developing in the Podolsk' and’ Volhyriia districts, of' Western Rhs'sia’These areas are being “‘ravished by huge armies fipld ' mice/; are'slowly birc steadily migrating towards the Uhsh frontier. ■ The Governineiit or 1 odolsk and Volhy.nia have forwarded an, urgent appeal to' Moscow, for' the early dispatch of poison gas detachments of the Red army to combat the pests, which are believed to have come xrom the famine districts of-Central Ukraine seeking fooa. correspondent of the Kharkoff ' l ' avu y a remarkable picture of ope ot til© five motive armies which are at tlie moment traversing the Volhynia district. “The mouse army is visible at a distance of five miles,”' he says, cm mg to the huge flocks of thousands m crows cranes, and buzzards, and nawks, winch are hovering above their feast At night, the owls, foxes, and ueasels ravage , th© hordes, whose numl j.i SGei ?- s I ( lcl ’ease with the 'progress oi .the, flight through the country The mice are advancing upon a front a mile wide - and two miles deeo. There is a contiinious squeak, a million times magnified. The population of the villages in the path of the mouse armies are being obliged to evacuate their homes, and., are fleeing north and south. ...