People in Queensland and New South Wales have surrendered after half a year of battling a devastating rat epidemic, only hoping winter will reduce the rat population.
When rats began to appear in New South Wales and Queensland in late 2020, residents were as enthusiastic as if they were entering a war.
People then talked about strategizing against rats, setting extremely sophisticated traps, or fortifying houses against small but annoying enemies. Six months have passed, the number of rats has once again increased sharply, despite thousands of tons of rat poison used, not to mention a terrible flood that swept across the east coast of the country. Rats are no longer an enemy to be eradicated, they seem to have become annoying black fluffy clouds that move everywhere where people have to learn to live together, according to the report. Guardian . Nightmare The nightmare that Australia is experiencing is known as the “rat epidemic”, caused by huge populations of house mice. The house mouse was brought to Australia by Europeans in 1788. Since then, rat epidemics have occurred several times in Australia when conditions are favorable, with increasing frequency. This year, the situation became so serious that the New South Wales state government had to announce an emergency relief package of 50 million USD for people to fight the rat epidemic, including money for rat poison research, drug support. mouse and rat traps up to $1,000 per small business and $500 per household. 
Dead rat in a farmer’s warehouse in Walgett. Photo: Guardian. But for many people, the support is nothing compared to the damage the rats cause. “We were away for four weeks and had relatives check the house every day. There was a period of about four days when no one came to look, and in those four days, they were all over the house,” said Louise McCabe, resident in the town of Tallimba, said. When relatives were asked to open the door by McCabe, thousands of rats were inside. “They chewed up the new carpet, they ate the wooden floor. The oven they broke. They ate the insulation inside the dishwasher,” McCabe said. McCabe later discovered rats nesting inside pillows on lounge chairs, crawling into kitchen cabinets, destroying electrical circuits. Damages totaled up to $30,000. The climax was when the woman put the clothes soaked in rat urine into the washing machine. When she returned, she discovered a dead rat had swollen inside the glass. Meanwhile, a farmer named Ben Storer living in Walgett, said that 800 hectares of his sorghum has been destroyed by the herd, causing damage up to 200,000 USD. Rats attack every part of Storer’s farm, from the grain barn and the mill to the swimming pool’s filter pipe. At the height of the rat epidemic, thousands of dead rats were found every time Mr. Storer used a grinder to grind the grain he harvested. Baiting is the only measure that can be deployed on a large scale to control rat populations. As a result, in the worst-affected towns, the smell of urine and dead rats was overwhelming. Local residents described the smell of rotting rats as “unbearable”. “With poison, we can kill 100,000 rats a night. But the next morning, another 200,000 will come back,” Mr. Storer said. “No one understands the rat epidemic until they’ve experienced it. No one understands the extreme stench, vandalized furniture. Rats eat all the insulation in the air conditioning system, eat the wires on the roof, corrode parts of the circuit board,” said John Southon, principal of Trundle Central High School. Winter hope While local residents seem to have given up on the fight against rats, New South Wales authorities have stepped in. Experts say they have successfully developed a rat poison that can turn the tide of the current war. A new rat poison using a super toxic chemical called bromadiolone is being approved for emergency use by the New South Wales government. However, scientists warn the drug can be dangerous for native animals that eat the dead rat. Steven Henery, broaching expert with the Australian Agency for Science and Industrial Research, said the coming winter would be an opportunity for humans to put an end to the current rat epidemic. “My hope is that winter will slow down the birth rate of mice, and that only a very small number of mice will survive,” said Henery. One of the real concerns, Mr. Henery warned, is that the rat population has a high winter survival rate, and if the weather conditions are favorable the following spring, they will start to thrive again. 
Farmers burn fields after harvesting to destroy the rat’s food source. Photo: Guardian. “In August, farmers need to go out to their fields, look for signs of infestation. If they find any, then they will have to kill them before the breeding season. property arrives,” Mr. Henry said. Any human rat eradication strategy will only be able to reduce the rat population to a certain extent. Experts say that to be able to overcome the rat epidemic, humans will have to wait for the help of natural phenomena that are really terrible for mice. “The very large number of individuals interacting with each other increases the risk of disease transmission. When this phenomenon occurs at the same time they run out of food, they will fall ill and start eating each other, eating the animals. young. That’s when their whole growth system collapses,” said Mr. Henery. But until that day comes, people will have to keep setting traps, laying baits, and praying the weather will turn bitter cold. “I can only pray for freezing cold. That’s all I can do right now,” McCabe said.
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