Regional NSW mouse plague is killing local business and making life difficult

Residents of Blandford, 300km northwest of Sydney, have told how the crippling mouse plague is impacting their lives - and disclosed a secret weapon they use against the vermin.

Just how bad is the mouse plague in the Upper Hunter and other areas of regional NSW? Let’s ask Don Duffy of the Blandford General Store, about 300 km northwest of Sydney.

“Well, I don’t have a cash register any more,” Duffy told The Daily Telegraph. “The mice chewed through all the wiring.”

So he’s now calculating change the old-fashioned way and tallying up all the figures at the end of every day on paper.

The latest round of baits seem to be more effective than earlier poisons, but Duffy remains wary even though mice totals have lately decreased.

Don Duffy has run the Blandford General Store for over 50 years and hopes the new poison he is using will stop the mouse plague in his store. Picture: Jonathan Ng

“You think you’re finished with them,” he says, “and then they’re back.”

That’s because mice breed like rabbits, if rabbits were even more sexed-up and stupid. Mice are able to reproduce at just six weeks of age.

By comparison, even the randiest rabbit species don’t multiply until at least 16 weeks.

Murrurundi horse breeder and exporter Amanda Riordan has suffered such a mouse invasion that she was put in mind of her family’s previous eradication tactics.

An uncle, she reveals, once built a homemade flamethrower so he could flash-roast hundreds of mice in a single blazing sweep.

Nobody tell the petals at PETA, please.

At the peak of the drought, Blandford commercial cleaner Rebecca Parker and her family were paying about $400 for each batch of 30,000 litres of water.

Peanut butter traps set by Blandford resident Rebecca Parker.

Mouse captured using a simple trap by Rebecca Parker.

Then the mouse plague began in January.

Parker ended up dumping more than 20,000 litres because masses of mice died in her water tanks.

They chomped through the insulation of the family’s new stove. They turned up in daughter Sarah and son Michael’s beds. They were in her own bed and in husband Aaron’s clothes.

“We put 12 bait stations outside,” Parker said. “All of them were taken within just one hour.”

Her cost estimates are staggering: “At least $800 for bait, $1200 for water, $200 for cleaning products, $500 for general damage … all up, it must be at least $3000.”

And then there’s her substantial peanut butter bill. “It’s an old trick,” Parker explains. “You put peanut butter on the lid of a flip-top bin, then the mice fall into the water and drown.”

In just five nights, Parker and her peanut butter traps sent 500 mice to the hereafter. “There were probably more,” she said. “I stopped counting. It was just too gross.”

The stress is sometimes overwhelming, and matters are not helped by dumb opinions from those who can’t comprehend the scale of this disaster.

“I’ve heard people talk about ‘rehoming the mice’,” NSW Mental Health Minister Bronnie Taylor said.

“That’s a complete lack of understanding of what people are enduring.”

The Minister is on the side of human beings. “I am pleased we are empowering people with strategies to manage the plague,” she said. “I look forward to the ferocity in repellent being used.”

Amanda Riordan’s flame-throwing uncle would approve.

Tomorrow: the whole town is a coal town