THE MICE PLAGUE.

Taranaki Daily News, 9 August 1917, Page 2

THE MICE PLAGUE.

CURIOUS SIGHTS

(Wellington Post's Correspondent)

Pvdnev, July 25. There ore oiirioiissicl't- «' railwav goods yards in Sydnov, «hm m-.cks loaded with Fo,l„o V oon,, w from the far west-™ more remote grain-growing .re. w the "rip of the -mice plague, and the rodent apparently, load themselves in o tnl to,«kralon« with the produce ana come to the city. The removal of the ™k cover, cause, n wild pan.e among the tinv animals, and then men. bo, b and dogs proceed with ? .cs to t< slaughter. At least, thev did at iirst. lt \ow the novelty of. the h.ng » wearing off. and there ,s held to be little honor in heaps of dead mice ip,t sometimes the railway men baulk, an d a number of trucks now stand.ng unloaded in Alexandra yards test.ft" IHe fact. These, loaded witn enalT, came from the. mice country, and they smell so abominably of dead and living rodents that the trucks are give., a wideberth. The bags have been cut almost to pieces hv the mice, but the men declare that the overpowering stench does not come from the living animals, though thev are bad enough. Their theory is that the farmer put mice as well an Ulraw through his clialf-cutter, and that the livelv odour comes from .the new mixture of chaff thus produced. At any rate, the consignees refuse to accept the chart', and the Railway men talk revolution at the verv thought of handling it; and the matter "is being vigorously taken up with the consignor." It was hoped that the winter weather would wipe out the plague, or at least that the incredible millions of mice would succumb to some disease, after the manner provided by all-wise Mature, and demonstrated in the case of all similar plagues. But reports from most of the affected districts show that the mice do not appear to be decreasing, and that they are doing damage slowly, steadily, and in a manner altogether alarming. Traps, poisonous gas, poisoned food, hundreds of devices, wipe out uncountable millions of the creatures, without appearing to affect the total. A message just received from Parkos says: "A local farmer reports that mice arc now dying in thousands in his district from some rapidly-spreading disease." It in in this way that the plague will disappear; but the coming of the Itiriee-weleomo epidemic has been falsely reported so often that the Parkes message is being accepted with reservation