[scott]

what is the cause of this mess, sounds like happens in cycles? scott.

 

[rom]

Scott, rather than myself going into a lot of detail, there is quite bit of information on the net on mouse plagues in Australia.
I would only be repeating a small part of that information so I suggest you google or Bing, "Mouse Plagues" or "Mouse Plagues in Australia" and maybe a paper such as this one;
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_damag....ium/brownHR.pdf

There are a number of photos around from the 1930's showing heaps of plague mice 4 and 5 feet high that were killed in the haystacks and grain stacks of that time.

An experiment set up a few years ago in a walled area of some 5 acres or thereabouts to confine mice just to watch and record mice in their natural habitat so that control systems could be developed came unstuck when all the local raptors like hawks, falcons, owls and etc very quickly figured out that if you sat in the surrounding trees for a few minutes you got a meal without having to bother about spending hours of flapping around trying to track a meal down as those mice weren't going anywhere inside of that walled compound.

The mice are quite territorial and don't roam far but one randy buck mouse fitted out with a radio transmitter to track him in another trial disappeared out of range of a half a kilometre for a couple of weeks before turning up again for R and R and a bit the worse for wear after, it was assumed, working the available district female mouse population over and dodging the harem owners.

And for those who have not yet seen this quite vividly real video of a very bad Australian mouse plague;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH4EFgRB4bU

 

[scott]

thanks rom, can't imagine it, no i didn't do a search on it wanted to hear from you, again, thanks, scott.

 

[rom]

Just another small story on fishermen and mice during this year's mouse plague in the southern grain growing regions of the Eyre Peninsula in the state of South Australia.
The plague should be drawing to a close by now and this happened a few months ago at the height of the plague.

My nephew was involved for a couple of years past with an aboriginal settlement at Yalatta at the Head of the Great Australian Bight which is well west of any of the major grain regions on the Eyre Peninsula and is in semi-desert country.

Being a keen fisherman like his father, Johnny headed down during the height of the mouse plague this year for some ocean beach fishing at a beach near the Yalatta settlement.

Now this region is an immense region stretching a thousand kilometres along the Bight with almost no human habitation of any sort across the Nullabor Plains which is just a low rainfall with low desert scrub region along the southern / ocean fringe and bounded by Gibber [ small very ancient stones ] plains further north and then still further north into the Great Sandy Desert
For some hundreds of kilometres along the ocean at the Head of the Bight, there are almost untrafficked and often spectacular ocean cliffs and hundreds of kilometres of beach, all of which are washed by the very rough Bight waters and Great Southern Ocean waters which are unimpeded by any landmass for some 3000 kiometres south until the Antarctic continent.

This is where Johnny went for his fishing expedition.
The ocean Salmon, a surface feeding fish were biting very well so Johnny quickly caught a few and decided to clean them.
When he opened them up they were ALL full of mice!
The salmon were simply inedible!

The plague mice even out here in the semi desert areas were so thick that they were searching along the beaches for anything to consume and when the waves washed in it took immense numbers of them out to sea where the salmon and other fish had a fish gourmet meal.

Just another yarn to add to the folklore that surrounds the regular [ european house ] mice plagues in Australia since the mice first arrived, possibly on the 11 small ships of the "First Fleet" in January 1788.