They scuttle about so quickly, like little furry cockroaches. It’s horrifying cuteness!
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and from “unintended consequences” territory. (this is from a few years ago, so maybe somewhat of a prediction )
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So Cat’s are out of the question, due to them being indiscriminate predators.
This seems to be a cyclical problem. Perhaps snake breeders who work with local breeds could maintain a breeding group of non-venomous snakes. I don’t know enough to suggest specifics, but snakes often have large brood sizes, up to 50 eggs. If conditions were planned appropriately you could easily raise 2 generations within 6 months if you saw conditions were ripe for a “Mouse Plague” and end up with a 1600 fold increase in Snake population just at the moment when the mouse population starts to boom. The cost in terms of resources would likely be a fraction of what the mice are eating now.
The consequences to local ecosystems would have to be understood and buffered against as well. Perhaps if the snakes are likely to over-predate another species at the same time, choices could be made ahead of time to create sanctuary habitat for those other species.
It’s a big, complex project, but I’m sure humans would rather do something like this than risk the lives of their dogs with a broad spectrum poison.
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I think using animals to control the population would be fraught with challenges. Snakes don’t eat that much. Like a couple times a week. Mice reproduce so fast, there is no way they could control them.
Cats might have some luck, but even then.
Terriers were bred to kill vermin, but man - even a half dozen dedicated dogs on a farm seem to have their work cut out for them. Especially since mice are so much smaller and quicker than rats.
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Feral cats are one of the biggest killers of native wildlife. They are as big a problem as the mice, but a chronic issue rather than an immediate one.
Mouse plagues happen ever few decades when conditions are just right. Think about it like when ordinary grasshoppers turn into a plague of locusts - devouring everything in sight before dying off again.
If only Australia could introduce some new species of predator to take care of these mice…
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The mouse/grain ratio is getting to the point where they should probably just rebrand as “Keto flour” and toss it all into the grinder.
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True story. We saw numerous, numerous droppings, always flush along the walls where a mouse tends to scamper. We set a trap. Caught one wee tim’rous beastie. From then on: no more droppings at all. That one mouse had done it all.
We don’t need to naplam the state with chemicals, the problem will self-correct. With an abundance of prey, the predators will feast and reproduce, and eventually, the population will balance itself. Meanwhile, we are moving into winter so there will be less food for the vermin and they will begin to die off also contributing to the balance. To further encourage predators and avoid a repeat of the plague farmers should leave deadfall and trees around their property alone so said predators will move in.
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There are a lot of obese kookaburras and magpies that have had way more than their fill… will probably hand the problem over to the snakes -Yikes!!
Name checks out.
What’s grosser than the mouse droppings are the hantavirus that might be contained in the plumes of aerosol dust generated. There’s no cure and if you get the pulmonary syndrome associated with hanta, it has 33% fatality rate. So, get your N95 masks back on.
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Mice are an introduced species, they don’t have any natural predators in Australia. Among the few native animals that can eat them, none are capable of eating enough and/or breeding fast enough to put the slightest dint in the problem. Mice start breeding at 6 weeks old and produce a litter of up to 10 every 20 days. A handful of mice can produce thousands more in a season.
If we could keep them out of the food supply, they’d start cannibalising each other fairly quickly and the problem might solve itself. But keeping them out is next to impossible.
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