After enduring drought and fire, thousands of Australians are struggling with a plague of rats and mice, and many are hoping that the rainfall that is causing the biggest record will drown everyone.
According to a report in the Guardian, the rodents came across rural parts of New South Wales and Queensland, after the regions experienced a major harvest after years of drought.
One grocer told the newspaper that he arrived five hours early to clean his shop, 5Star supermarket, to throw away between 400 and 500 rodents caught every night.
‘We do not want to go in the morning sometimes. It stinks, they will die and it is impossible to find all the bodies, “said Naav Singh. “We have five or six bins every week that are just filled with groceries that we throw out.” He added that the mice even chewed through plastic soft drink bottles.
Another woman from the city of Toowoomba in Queensland told the Guardian that a friend recently pulled the dust out of her armchair when it started to stink, and found a nest of baby mice in the stuffing.
Mice on farms also wreaked havoc, chewing on hay bales and destroying machinery.
“Some farmers have lost as many as 2,500 bales,” said a local official. ‘There is not enough money for the council to do anything to help. All we can do is prevent them from entering our offices, machinery, tractors and trucks. They eat all the wiring. ‘
Officials, who are wary of spending thousands of dollars to deal with the plague, said they hope heavy rains will naturally wipe out the mice and rats.