A PLAGUE OF MICE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1901, 17 July 1890, Page 15

A PLAGUE OF MICE.

(Per Press Association.) Adelaide, July 14. A great mice plague has appeared at Kapunda. Entire wheat stacks have been demolished, and many farmers have oaptured as many as 6000 of the pest in a week. The plague of mice is not the new thing which the cablegram makes out. On the 10th June the Muudoora correspondent of the Kapunda Herald wrote : — " During the harvest farmers noted the number of mice, and said it presaged a dry winter. It is certain that the dry weather has caused a great increase, until now the land swarms with mice, and we pray for the frosts and rain to destroy the pest, for the mice destroy or damage everything that is eatable, and the paddocks show that a large quantity of the grain sown has been devoured. One farmer had to resow 70 acres, and several have had to do small pieces, whilst I know of one instance where no crop is expeoted from over 100 acres, as the farmer says he will not resow now it is so late. The wheat stacks are in an awful mess. Thousands of bags must have been out open in the station yard alone. The grain ran out of the bags until it was two bags high on the outside, and the stacks began to collapse; and although several men were constantly refilling for several days, it still remains a bag high. The mice also devour a great deal. Our blacksmith had a bag of wheat in his shop, and they ate fully a third of the bagful. They fall into the tanks by thousands, and spoil the water. They ate the only belltopper in the village, and the owner of that artiole one evening made out his accounts, and next morning found that the mice had got into his pocket and eaten them; they also destroyed a quarter of fresh beef for him. They eat tbe binding of books, and have given great trouble at the public and Sunday schools in' this way, and even tbe sacred edifices are not spared nor the saored word respected. A hole will be drilled through your best suit or dress as readily as a wheatbag, and when you retire to rest they endeavour to emulate the Fijian, and appreciate long pig, I have seen persons with pieces bitten out off their hands and feet, and know a lady who, having a sore finger, and poulticing it, had the poultice oaten and a part of the skin as well. One doss not relish his dinner after seeing 20 miae caught in the tea chest, and 103 caught in a single night within a yard of the flour bag with no other trap than a wheat bag containing a few grains laid on the kitchen floor, and six oats in the same room to keep the mice from going in ;— this is a fact, and I oounted the mice. Hundreds of thousands must be slain daily, yet they decrease not. A farmer told me he had bought and used a pound's worth of poison, and yet every evening he catches several hundreds by putting wheat in the drums of strippers, and then giving the beaters an occasional turn. Another captures as many as 900 in a night in one stripper. A neighbour set poison, and next morning found 86 dead mice on his table. The same man hung a wheat sack on the side of the barn, and caught 700 in it at once. At Mrs Haines' last night they trapped 1000 in a zinc-lined bin. When the children went to capture them they rushed to a corner and piled up on each other, and many of the top ones leaped over. This week a man caught 290 in a single hollow [ post, and it is the rule to catch several hundreds at each farmhouse nightly, and many of them keep about 20 cats. The oats are satiated, and the mice are most audacious. I have sat still for a few minutes in a room, and had a score of mice running about me ; one, on one occasion, coolly climbed upon my lap, and another stood looking at the candle until some hot grease was dropped on it. They run about the children's feet when they are at school, and the members of the quadrille class have had them out on the floor as soon asa dance stopped. You people in the south will not be able to realise what vast numbers there are of the pest even with the figures I have given. At first I thought the farmers, as usual, were grumbling at nothing, so I visited a farm, and after dark took a lantern and visited the barns and Bheds, and I was astonished. If I ever | saw a mouse, I saw 50,000 that night. When we opened the barn door they rushed over the bags in a black mass, quite covering the bags, and the noise made by their feet was like that of a large mob of sheep rushing away. Everywhere they rushed before us, and every part seemed alive with the little creatures. Next morning I counted over 500 that had fallen into kerosene tins and other utensils about the sheds. No doubt they destroy the seeds of many weeds, and they effectually clean the cesspits ; but we shall not be sorry to see the last of thorn."

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