In scenes reminiscent of a B-grade horror movie, campers in outback south-west Queensland have been forced to jump in their vehicles and flee hordes of invading rats.
The rodents have been breeding in huge numbers as a result of ideal seasonal conditions and have been chewing through computer and phone cables as well as car wiring … and now it seems they could be coming to a campsite near you.
Don Rowlands from the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service told the ABC that campers at Birdsville certainly need to be aware of the long-haired native rats.
“If you have a camp fire, make it a little away from where you are camping,” he said. “And make sure everything in your camp is either zipped up or off the ground,”.
Are you kidding, Don? I’m not setting foot outside of my van!
“I was talking to a couple yesterday and they said the rats were friendly it would seem,” Don told the ABC. “They just crawled all over them and they really didn’t know how to get away from them … in the end they got on the back of their vehicle and were able to escape.”
Oh great! At least they ‘escaped’ … perhaps the next couple won’t be so lucky. Now this really is sounding like a horror movie, isn’t it?.
Don says the rats have also been attacking a lot of vehicles.
“All the wiring and some of the cars have been unable to be started and then had to be rewired,” he told the ABC. “They can be destructive and you’ve got to hang everything off the ground before you go to bed, otherwise they’ll get amongst that as well.”
