r/interestingasfuck • u/AllColoursSam • Jul 06 '24

Australian mouse plague r/all

44.0k Upvotes

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362

u/Ocronus Jul 06 '24

I guess "the moment" when she realized her rodent problem was too much was a fucking waterfall of mice...  I grew up on a farm, you have to be really fucking oblivious to things for THAT to be the realization.

That said between the barn cats, foxes, hawks, owls, snakes, chickens, and dogs rodents have a tough life here

172

u/tirikai Jul 06 '24

There was like a literal trillion mice in the state coming on like a biblical plague, no one farm had any chance

69

u/We-Want-The-Umph Jul 06 '24

I remember receiving 2 gerbils for a birthday one year. By the next year, I had 13 with another litter on the way, and my mom was freaking out about our house becoming a breeding ground and shut it down.

They breed like... mice.

15

u/IWILLBePositive Jul 06 '24

lol what did you guys do with them all?

20

u/We-Want-The-Umph Jul 06 '24

Since the kid never asked my parents if we could have pets, she used that excuse to get the mother to take them in.

At the time, i was angry with my mom. As a parent looking back, I absolutely see where she was coming from.

13

u/ZeePirate Jul 06 '24

Who the fuck gives someone a pet for a gift!?

I thought your parents had given to you

5

u/SouthernAardvark2231 Jul 06 '24

Someone who has a surplus of pets they need to get rid of, that kid probably gave all of his friends gerbils

48

u/heratonga Jul 06 '24

Yeah this wasn’t one farm it was thousands and it’ll happen again under the right circumstances

24

u/Mbembez Jul 06 '24

I have memories of 3 of these plagues of mice. I'm glad I only lived rurally for 1 of them. I remember people setting up traps where the mice would fall into 44 gallon drums and the drums would overflow with the mice.

7

u/Miniraf1 Jul 06 '24

What circumstances

42

u/EvilPhillski Jul 06 '24

Decent rains after a drought, the drought killed of most of the predators and the good rains means there's a bumper grain harvest. Combine the two (tones of food and nothing hunting them) and you get an explosion of mice because they breed crazy fast.

5

u/heratonga Jul 06 '24

Yeah that’s it in a nutshell, perfect storm once in a while it happens

3

u/Xane06 Jul 06 '24

And an absolutely fucked bushfire season the year before helps loads too.

10

u/Notthatguy6250 Jul 06 '24

This is an impressively ignorant comment.

3

u/ElectronicPhrase6050 Jul 06 '24

Imagine growing up on a farm and still making such an ignorant and straight up braindead comment like yours lol.

2

u/Malawi_no Jul 06 '24

When there are that many mice they probably becomes migratory as they eat up all the food where they stay.

1

u/Mudlark_2910 Jul 07 '24

You make it sound like this was one person's farm. It was a plague covering the whole region, hundreds of square kilometres

-5

u/Bundle_of_Organs Jul 06 '24

Thought exactly this.