Colin Tink, a 63-year-old farmer from eastern Australia, said he’s never seen such a plague in all his years farming nor a drought like the one that preceded the plague, which turned fertile lands into dust bowls.
That’s why when the rains finally ended the drought last year, Tink thought his fortunes were changing.
The rains led to an unusually productive harvest from September to March. Farmers filled their silos with grains and their barns with hay. Tink himself grew enough hay to feed his cattle for two years.
Unfortunately, the productive harvest only set the stage for one of the country’s worst infestations to date. Thousands of mice burrowed deep into hay bales for food and shelter. What the mice don’t eat gets ruined anyway because their urine trickles through the hay, causing barns to stink.
Henry calls the mice “breeding machines” because of how fast they reproduce in a season. A single pair of breeding mice, which start breeding at the age of six weeks, can produce over 500 offspring in a season.
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