Grey nomads who have ever been given a fright by a mouse scurrying around at a campsite had better get ready to jump on a campchair!
A mouse plague is wreaking havoc across multiple Australian states. The ABC reports that in New South Wales, a ‘carpet’ of mice has blanketed parts of the state, from Merriwa in the Upper Hunter region to Tamworth and Moree in New England.
In Queensland, a plague that began seven months ago is leaving a trail of destruction that has cost tens of thousands of dollars in lost crops and property damage.
The owner of DJ’s Produce in Charleville, David Jones, said baits and traps had sold out across the region.
“Every second person that walks through the door is looking for a bait or trap for the mice around town because they’re so bad,” he said. “I’ve had many calls from Roma trying to buy sticky pads and baits because they’ve been unavailable there.”
Mr Jones said rain early last year led to a breeding frenzy and a lack of follow-up rain caused a population explosion.
For grey nomads, of course the nightmare is that the pesky rodents will gnaw away at wiring in their vehicle’s engine or just get in their home on wheels. Graham and Sandra Ashley, who travel in a Winnebago towing a Suzuki Jimny, are still scarred by the time mice invaded their motorhome a few years ago while they were camped at Strathalbyn in South Australia.
After a prolonged spell of heavy rain, Sandra was laying in her bed one day when she heard tiny feet scurrying above her head. The couple then found that the potatoes they had in a drawer under the cooker had bite marks in them … and so they bought a mouse trap.
“I put peanut butter and jam on it and, sure enough, the first night we caught a mouse!” recalls Sandra. “That was me then – I emptied my food cupboard and my oven and grill and ewwwwww … mouse droppings everywhere!”
The couple suspected the troublesome rodents were coming up through the cupboard where the gas bottles were, and Graham sealed some holes with silicon … but the night-time scurrying continued.
“The worry, of course, was what they may be doing in the roof space,” said Sandra. “What wires were they chewing … I’m not afraid of mice, but I didn’t like the idea of the little buggers eating their way through our van.”
In the end, the Ashleys trapped six mice, all in the same drawer under the cooker. “
We feared our electrics would one day go down, but we were very fortunate we didn’t have any damage,” said Sandra. “Though we did find droppings for ages afterwards, even under my bed and in the cupboards above our heads … they got everywhere!”
The Ashleys were glad they used a trap and not poison. “It meant we didn’t get any bad smells from dead rodents,” said Sandra. “Just the creeps from them being into our clothes and stuff!”
I was caretaking a property in WA.
The farm shed was infested with rats that were around my Van at night.
I filled a ten gallon flour with water and fitted a strong wire across the top through a beer can.
Smeared peanut butter over the beer can, placed a plank going to the top of the container. The rats wud go up the ramp walk out onto the beer can which spun around tossing them into the water. Caught hundreds. One thing I learnt..it takes ages for a rat to drown.
We are in Quirindi NSW, on a duck farm . Now we have mice in under our oven and in our draws , traps set bait out . Lots of feeding but nothing in traps . Our motorhome has a smell in the cupboards what can we do .
Napthalene Flakes by Novex was a product that deterred the mice from entering areas where it was deployed, unfortunately this product is no longer readily available. Napthalene in the form of moth balls is still available both in certain stores and on-line.
The downside of Napthalene is of course the omnipresent characteristic odour/smell, reminiscent of Granny’s linen closet.