Severe mouse plague in eastern Australia, rat rain appears from granary equipment

 

 

The mouse plague in eastern Australia has been severe over the past six months, with farmers facing the worst rodent infestation in decades. Videos of the local rat infestation have gone viral online, among them a clip posted on Twitter by Australian journalist Lucy Thackray, in which a farmer, while cleaning granary equipment, is seen with a huge mass of rats falling from the sky, like a "rat rain," in a disgusting scene.

 

According to foreign media reports, thousands of tonnes of poison bait have already been deployed locally, but unfortunately the rats are still everywhere. Some farmers also said that 800 hectares of sorghum fields were eaten bare by the rats in one go, with losses of 200,000 US dollars. Besides entering farmland, the rats have also gone into rural hospitals to bite patients, or invaded many hotels, making it impossible for the hotels to do business and forcing them to close. In view of this, the government of New South Wales plans to switch to more aggressive methods to exterminate the rats, announcing a total of 50 million Australian dollars (about 300 million Hong Kong dollars) in subsidies to develop new rodenticides or buy more poisonous bait, but some people criticize the government for being half a beat slow and having already missed the best timing.