Plague of ravenous, destructive mice torments state

摘要

At night, the floors of sheds vanish beneath carpets of scampering mice. Ceilings come alive with the sounds ofscratching. One family blamed mice chewing electrical wires for their house burning down.Vast tracts of land in Australia's New South Wales state are being threatened by a mouse plague that the stategovernment describes as "absolutely unprecedented." Just how many millions of rodents have infested theagricultural plains across the state is guesswork."We're at a critical point now where if we don't significantly reduce the number of mice that are in plagueproportions by spring, we are facing an absolute economic and social crisis in rural and regional New SouthWales," Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall said this month.