PLAGUE OF MICE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25090, 4 December 1942, Page 3

PLAGUE OF MICE

MEN’S EARS GNAWED DISCOMFORT IN DESERT (Air Mail) SYDNEY, Nov. 27. Australia’s transcontinental railway for much of its route through Western Australia, traverses lonely deserr stretches, but from time to time the monotony is unpleasantly relieved by a plague of pests. The latest visitation is from hordes of mice, which in their millions give the impression that the whole earth is bubbling and moving. They swarm across the railway line day and night, making life for maintenance workers almost unbearable. While they are asleep mice gnaw their hair and ears unless they pull the bedclothes over their heads. One telegraph linesman who had been away for a week came back to camp and, on getting into bed. found it full of mice. Food and clothes are being destroyed by the mice, and at many points along the line it has been found impossible to keep them out of drinking water. This is a serious problem, as water has to be carted as far as 400 miles to some camps. The mice followed a plague of rabbits. apparently from some inland drought-stricken and foodlcss area. The rabbits are now dying in hundreds of thousands along the line, and their rotting carcasses are in turn creating a plague of blowflies, which often form a solid green mass on the ground outside the railway camps. By weight of numbers the surviving rabbits have grown so tame that passengers step off trains and pick them up. A lush season in New South Wale; and Victoria has brought a plague of caterpillars and. cut-worms which are doing tremendous damage to crops and pasturage. In the Albury district, on the border of these two States, snakes are more plentiful than the oldest residents can remember. A record number have been killed, and children have been specially warned to exercise care. Three children faced by a large tiger snake took refuge in a tree, from which they were rescued some time later.