The Mice of Mallee

At Mallee's railroad sidings the mice scratched at the iron sides of wheat bins. The noise was like the splatter of freshly tarred gravel on a thousand auto fenders. Telephones crackled and spluttered as the hungry hordes chewed at the insulation on the wires. For the cats of Mallee it was the chance of a lifetime. But the mousers were sated. With mice by the millions in the fields and roads, the cats merely brushed the mice out of their paths.

The musine inundation of the rich, rolling wheatlands 200 miles north of Melbourne began last fortnight with no more warning than a tropical thunderstorm. Overnight, apparently from nowhere, the myriads of mice appeared. Too weak from hunger to walk, they crawled across fields and into houses, nesting in coat pockets and automobile cushions, devouring everything in sight, from kapok mattresses to sultanas on the vine. When nothing else could be found, the mice ate each other or nibbled at sleeping farmers. In desperation the farmers tied strings around the bottoms of their trousers.

At Meringur, near the South Australian border, Farmer Charles Mangan reported the overnight disappearance of a haystack worth $600. An old Mallee pioneer, after placing his false teeth carefully by his bedside, awoke to find them on the floor of another room, mauled by the mice.

Last week one Melbourne newspaper excitedly reported that the invading mouse army was only 25 miles from the city. This turned out to be what Australians call a "furphy" (phony), but Melbournians were still scared. Victoria's government urged Mallee farmers to an all-out campaign with cyanogen and strychnine. At Ouyen, Mrs. Bert Holland planned a more direct appeal through prayer. An hour before church time she went to her wardrobe to get her Sunday clothes. Mrs. Holland found that the mice of Mallee had eaten them all.

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