Hidden in the dark, the terror of the dark, is a herd of thousands of mice. Wander around the wheat cellar at the Fragar family farm, a seven-hour drive from Sydney. The drought is over, and the Fragar family’s first good harvest in years is being ravaged by rats. But the Fragars weren’t the only victims. Countless farms along Australia’s eastern grain belt are facing a rat epidemic described as the worst in public memory, according to New York Times . Rats in the grain warehouse at the Fragar family farm. Photo: New York Times. The rat epidemic came after years of bountiful crops màng On average, every 10 years, Australia faces a rat epidemic. This year, the rats appeared after a year of favorable rain and wind in 2020. The crops were bountiful, the farmers’ food stores were full, becoming an ideal food source for the rats to multiply. This year’s rat epidemic is also partly caused by the change in people’s farming methods. In the past, farmers used to burn the stubble after each crop, before sowing began. But over the past 15 years, Australian farmers have started sowing seeds directly on the trunks of old food crops, to protect the environment. It was this change that created an additional food supply as well as an ideal nesting place for the rats. Both natural and man-made factors, combined with the rapid reproductive cycle – a single mother can give birth to 6-10 pups in 3 weeks, have caused the rat population to explode into the tens of thousands. million children. Meanwhile, the Australian government has been criticized for its slow response. Recently, after a long period of rat epidemic raging, the New South Wales state government lifted the ban on the use of bromadiolone poison, which is considered a “napal bomb” for rats. Rats on a grain tarpaulin at a farm in Tottenham. Photo: AP. Tottenham is a small town in the midwest region of the state of New South Wales. Residents here said they have never seen a rat epidemic as long as it is now in the past. Winter is now slowly coming to the southern hemisphere, including Australia. Cold weather slows down the growth of mice. Robert Brodin, the owner of a shop in Tottenham, said the number of rats he catches each morning is now 15-20, down by nearly half compared to the previous time. However, Mr. Brodin expressed skepticism about the possibility that the rat epidemic would end just through winter. “They used to say, once they (rats) start eating each other, the rat epidemic will pass. But they have been eating each other since December 2020 and nothing has changed,” Mr. Brodin said. Steve Henry, an expert on rat diseases in Australia, admits it is difficult to predict when the current rat epidemic will pass. Mr. Henry said the rat epidemic can only end when it has peaked. “The epidemic will end when there are too many rats in the ecosystem, all of them interacting with each other, causing the disease to spread quickly. At the same time, the rats run out of food, they will be both sick and hungry, that is when they will attack each other and eat the young,” expert Henry predicted. If the rat population survives the winter in large numbers, the size of the rat population will explode again in the spring, then the situation could be worse. Until the rat epidemic is over, it will continue to be a psychological burden for people living in the areas directly affected. Life turned upside down “I feel like I’m watching the rats gnaw away at the family’s future,” said Kathy Fragar. During the first half of 2021, the rat epidemic has spread across southern Queesland, New South Wales and northern Victoria, the three wealthiest eastern states in Australia. “The rat epidemic is the flip side of a rare lucky year out of the worst drought in a century.” New York Times comment. Not only attacking crops, rats even attack people in the house. They get into the air conditioning system, destroy household appliances, eat poultry. Communication systems in some areas of Australia were disrupted when rats bitten telecommunications cables. Rats biting power lines also short-circuited and set a house on fire in New South Wales. Mr. Terry Klante emptied the rat out of the trap. Photo: New York Times. The rat epidemic makes people do things every day that no one is interested in. At the stores, employees set traps every night, and in the morning drown the rats they catch. In residential areas, “cremation yards” sprang up, where people bring the bodies of rats they find or kill for incineration. Hospitals also struggle with hygiene requirements against the invasion of rats. Jeff Fragar, the family’s ranch owner, said the loss of wheat storage was noticeable due to rat infestation. Mr. Fragar hopes to be able to sell 500 tonnes of the 700 tonnes of wheat already harvested on the farm. Even with such an optimistic figure, the family still lost $30,000. Many farmers find themselves in a situation where their goods are returned because rats are found in their lots. Mr. Fragar said the family’s biggest concern right now is the risk of not being able to continue growing the next crop. The Fragar family farm is in its infancy. The swarm of rats will eat whatever seed man sows in the ground. But if we continue to wait, the ideal time for sowing will pass, the farm is at risk of crop failure, or even no crop to harvest. The NSW Farmers lobby group warned New South Wales could lose billions of dollars as the rat epidemic affects the upcoming wheat, barley and canola crops. “We haven’t been able to plant anything for three years now because of the drought. We’ve only had half a year of good weather, and then the rats have ruined everything. If the weather doesn’t continue to be favorable, I can saying that our luck has run out. The bank will no longer help us,” said Mr. Fragar. Can only wait Jo Randall lives more than 100 kilometers south of the Fragars’ farm. The woman said she cried when she discovered that the rats had entered the house and destroyed the furniture. The Randalls consider themselves lucky because they were able to protect the farm from rats, by actively trapping and burning the farmland. But the Randalls live in an old house, with many cracks, easily infested by rats. Even when it was cold in the morning, Mrs. Randall often had to open the window to release the stench from the rats. A domestic dog chases mice under a grain-covered canvas on the farm of George Greig’s family. Photo: New York Times. In the house, there were traces of rats everywhere. Mrs. Randall’s phone case was crushed at the edge. The sound system of the family is damaged by biting the wire. Rats leave teeth marks on many other household objects. For Mrs. Randall, the ultimate limit was the rats getting into the bed. This finally happened, when the woman found rat droppings on the bed sheet. “Ultimately we have to accept the fact that we’re not going to win this war, we’re not going to get rid of the rats. The best we can do is wait for the rat epidemic to pass,” Ms. Randall said. .

Fiona Adams, an Australian farmer, holds a rat that was killed by her dog. Photo: Sydney Morning Herald. As cats give up chasing mice and dogs risk death from ingesting rat bait, farmers across Australia have no choice but to improvise to deal with the raging rat disaster. For Eris Fleming, an artist and rancher on her family farm near Bakers Swamp in New South Wales, Australia, the creative approach was to create mini water traps – 15 – everywhere around my house. Mr. Fleming, 78, has seen the current large population of rats once before, in 1984. Although he initially tried placing rat baits like his neighbors, his German Shepherd “started eating the bait faster than the mice.” His dog started bleeding and needed urgent and expensive care to stay alive at the local veterinary clinic. “Vets are going to make a lot of money in this short time,” he said. Rats that have eaten bait will eventually decompose on the ceiling, in the walls and under the floorboards. “The stench is unbelievable,” he said. And so, buckets of water, narrow curtain rods coated with PVC and a layer of canola oil, and some peanut butter decoys, all designed to trap and kill rodents relentlessly. . Just like that, every morning, Mr. Fleming started by collecting dead mice, at least 300 a day. They will then be buried away from the house. It took him three hours a day to clear the bucket of dead rats, dig, bury the rats and reset the trap. However, he also saves time from having to clean every surface, such as clearing rat droppings off the table, and getting rodents out of bed or even out of the refrigerator. Several of Fleming’s neighbors followed his method, and they all reported massive exterminations of rats. Fleming currently counts only a handful of dead rats each morning, but the significant and welcome drop is probably more related to the fact that the rat population is turning to forage elsewhere, such as near Sydney than. Other techniques used by people in his county include a woman mixing powder with plaster to trick rats, although that still risks the rat decomposing in hard-to-reach nooks and crannies. Elsewhere, many people prefer to use traps made of expandable latex rings – like those used to castrate pets. Rats were killed by traps made of expandable rubber latex rings. Photo: Sydney Morning Herald. Improvisation will probably still be required as the supply of rat bait and rat traps continues to be strained. Rat-killer retailer Bunnings says demand started picking up in December and accelerated even further after April. “We have seen an increase in customer demand for rat control products across New South Wales,” said Belinda Rakers, Bunnings product manager. “Due to high demand, supplies are currently at a low level. However, we are continuing to work closely with our suppliers to get more stock in stores as soon as possible,” she said. In Neurea, near Wellington, Fiona Adams is using rat bait to at least keep the rats under control, but they still rummage through her barn at night. Her dog killed one even as she was talking to guests from the Herald visiting the farm on May 20. “I certainly don’t like them, but unfortunately, you have to get used to them,” she said. “They have cute little faces, but they are stinky little animals. Driving along the road at night, they are like toy cars.” Although the cold weather has begun to slow their growth, that hasn’t stopped them from eating all of the lupine beans Fiona planted on May 19, leaving only empty husks. For Fiona as well as Fleming, the scale of the epidemic was hard to imagine for many in Sydney and elsewhere. Rats can breed after just six weeks and then lay multiple litters within three weeks, triggering a population explosion. Farmers in the area who sold their livestock turned to hay production to take advantage of the bountiful rains, but only saw entire haystacks eaten by rats within a few months. After all, it will be up to science rather than temporary or other methods to control such a massive rat population explosion. “The only way you can prevent this is by doing research,” Mr. Fleming mused.

For months, rats have ravaged fields and damaged homes in eastern Australia, from the Victorian border in the south to Queensland in the north, causing millions of dollars in damage to crops and machinery. A pair of mice can give birth to 500 more pups per season, the females give birth to a new litter every three weeks, and they constantly need more food. Rat “nightmare” for farmers in New South Wales, Australia. Photo: Pelgar International. The New South Wales government is considering a more drastic solution. On May 20, officials announced they had acquired 5,000 liters of one of the world’s most powerful rat poisons to treat rats. However, some residents fear the use of poisons could damage food crops and kill local wildlife. End of drought, Australia meets rats again “We’ve had long, bad years of drought, and then 2020 is going to be beautiful. But there’s always something great happening, and this year it’s a rat pandemic,” said farmer Michael Payten of the small town of Canowindra, west of Sydney, sigh. The rainfall in 2020 is roughly equal to the total rainfall two years earlier, making the soil fertile and yielding a bountiful harvest, but also creating ideal conditions for the rats. “Trying to count the number of rats that are harming Eastern Australia is like counting the stars in the sky,” said CSIRO researcher Steve Henry, considered by the New South Wales government to be Australia’s best expert on the disease. in mice, said. Rat extermination expert Sue Hodge clears dead rats from traps in her client’s home every day in the New South Wales town of Canowindra. Photo: CNN. According to Sue Hodge, a rat extermination expert in Canowindra, when winter approaches, rats even take refuge in people’s homes. Ms. Hodge spends her days dealing with dead rats trapped in a client’s home. She removed rat droppings from the kitchen, the children’s room and even their beds. In her home, Mrs. Hodge used steel wool to prevent rats from crawling in from every nook and cranny. She sets a mousetrap every night. According to the New South Wales Agricultural industry group, the loss of cereal groups such as wheat, barley and rapeseed, as well as forage, is having a major impact on the finances of farm businesses. The survey found that a third of businesses had an estimated loss of $50,000-150,000 ($38,000-116,000). The group warned that the total damage could reach hundreds of millions of dollars if urgent action is not taken. Government measures – immediate but too dangerous The New South Wales government is resorting to “heavy weapons” to end the rat disaster, after weeks of consultations with Mr Henry, CSIRO and farmers. Last week, New South Wales agriculture chief Adam Marshall unveiled “a scary set of tools for rat control”, including free rat poison for farmers. This week, thousands of liters of bromadiolone – a “second generation anticoagulant” has been introduced to effectively kill rats. However, Charles Sturt University ecologist Dr Maggie Watson says the toxin is “too dangerous” to use in the environment, as it can leach into the soil and bioaccumulate in insects. then join the food chain. She said native birds in Australia are all at risk of death after eating a poisoned mouse, and it takes up to 15-20 years for them to come back to life. NSW farmer Michael Payten calls his tractor shed a “rat hotel”. Photo: CNN. Proponents of the administration argue that bromadiolone is highly toxic and will likely kill some native predators, but there aren’t enough hawks and owls for the rat population to drop naturally. While the rat population is unusually high, farmers warn that they are running out of time to harvest the winter crop.

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.

Families should take the necessary safety measures to avoid unfortunate accidents to their children. According to the Westmead Children’s Hospital (CHW) in Australia, an average of 10 children are brought to CHW every year after falling from a balcony. Most of these children fall from their balconies, of which approximately 75% are under the age of five. Westmead Children’s Hospital provides care and treatment for 80,000 sick and injured children each year. This is the largest pediatric center in the state of New South Wales, Australia, with the capital city of Sydney; Child treatment in New South Wales, Australia and Pacific Rim countries. To protect children from unfortunate accidents from balconies, CHW has introduced balcony and railing safety recommendations. As defined by the CHW, a balcony is an area of ​​a building that is positioned higher than the ground. If the balcony is at a height of 1m above the ground, it must be surrounded (barrier) by a railing. A balcony railing as a guard or barrier is usually made of iron or wooden slats. Glass panels are also commonly used. How can children be injured at the balcony? Young children may get their heads, arms or legs stuck in between the gaps in the railing. Young children may fall over the gap between the railing if the distance between them is too large. The slightly older kids may slip or stumble over the balcony doorway and fall to the balcony floor. Children can also fall off the balcony if they can climb over the balcony railing. For example, horizontal bars on a railing can allow a child to climb over the railing. Items such as potted plants or outdoor furniture placed next to the railing can also be used as ladders for children to climb. According to CHW statistics, an average of 10 children are brought to this hospital every year after falling from a balcony. Most of these children fall from their balconies. Of the children brought to the CHW, approximately 75% are under the age of five, 40% occur in the summer, and three out of every five cases that are taken to the hospital are boys. During the period 2008-2018, 88 children were taken to CHW for treatment due to a fall from the balcony. A large number of those injuries are rated serious. Fall injuries, even from low heights, can be serious; “40% of fatal falls, among children under 15 years old in Australia, are from a height of less than 3 feet (91.44cm). Corridor windows on each floor are also potentially unsafe if precautions are not taken. How to prevent accidents from the balcony? Australia’s National Building Act requires balcony balustrades to be at least 1m high if the balcony is more than 1m above the surface below. Any space in the handrail should not allow a circular object 12.5cm in diameter to pass through. Where balconies are located more than 4 meters above the lower surface, the barriers must not have horizontal sections or resemble horizontal (climbable) sections between 15cm and 76cm above floor. According to CHW, to ensure the safety of children, families need to ensure that their family’s balcony or railing is at least 1m high and the distance between vertical bars is not wider than 12.5cm. Balcony balustrades should not have cross bars or the like that can allow young children to climb. All furniture, potted plants and other climbable objects should be kept away from the edge of the balcony. Adults should also beware of furniture that is light enough that children can pull to the edge of the balcony; Check the balustrades regularly to make sure they are in good condition; Supervise children while they are on the balcony and can lock the balcony doors to keep them out. In Vietnam, nowadays, one of the most popular ways to keep children safe from unfortunate balconies is to install safety nets. Especially in high-rise apartments, areas such as corridors of each floor, balconies, windows are places with potential risks of unsafety. The balcony safety net is made up of three main parts: the cable, two aluminum bars and the screws. The stainless steel core cables and plastic shells will be woven into a specialized aluminum bar system that is tightly mounted on the ceiling and railing. The usual distance between two cables is 5cm. This distance is enough to prevent children and many objects from getting through. The cost of installing safety net ranges from 150,000 VND to 180,000 VND / 1m2, depending on the installation area and materials. Answering questions of people related to the installation of safety cable nets in apartments, the Ho Chi Minh City Fire Department said: “The installation and supplementation of protective cable nets at the department The building does not affect the fire safety conditions of the building, however, these protective cable nets must be easily dismantled in case the fire department is approached. to serve the rescue and rescue work in case of fire and explosion incidents “. The safety net has a fairly simple structure, the installation cost is not too high and provides great support in ensuring safety for families in apartments or high-rise buildings, especially families with young children. Families should take the necessary safety measures to avoid unfortunate accidents to their children.