G’day, you beautiful disaster of a nation. Australia, land of spider-fuelled nightmares and drop bears, has outdone itself. A mice plague. Not just a few scuttling squeakers nibbling at your Weet-Bix, but a biblical, Old Testament, ‘Pharaoh, let my people go’ level infestation. I’m talking millions. Billions, perhaps. A furry, twitching, ever-hungry carpet of rodent rage sweeping across the Outback like a tsunami of whiskers and terror.
I’ve seen the footage. Grain silos transformed into writhing, squeaking oceans. Hospital wards overrun, their sterile corridors echoing with the pitter-patter of tiny, relentless feet. Farmers, those stoic heroes of the sunburnt country, are weeping into their beers as their life’s work is devoured. And what does the government do? They’ve authorised the use of a poison so potent it could probably kill a small elephant. But here’s the rub, the crux, the sheer tragicomic absurdity: the poison is only available in 20-kilogram bags. So farmers, desperate men with torch and shovel, are having to lug these giant sacks through hordes of biting vermin. It’s like watching a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos where the hippos have rabies and the marbles are your sanity.
The real question, the one that keeps me up at my gin-soaked desk, is this: why? Why now? Some say it’s the wet weather, a bumper crop of grain that’s turned the countryside into a rodent smorgasbord. Others whisper of something darker, a breakdown in the natural order, a cosmic joke played by a bored deity. But I know the truth. It’s the bloody cats. Years of ‘responsible pet ownership’ campaigns have decimated the feral feline population, the only thing standing between us and this squeaking apocalypse. We neutered our saviours, and now we reap the whirlwind of tails and teeth.
And the psychological toll, the creeping dread that comes from living in a house that doubles as a rodent gymnasium. People are sleeping in tents in their gardens, their homes rendered uninhabitable by the ceaseless scratching. A mother in New South Wales told a reporter, her voice cracking like dry earth, ‘I can’t put my baby down. The mice will get him.’ Folks, that is not a metaphor. That is a statement of fact, delivered by a woman whose eyes have seen the horrors of the rodent underworld.
Meanwhile, the government faffs about, issuing bromides and cautionary statements. ‘We are monitoring the situation,’ they drone. Monitoring. Like it’s a weather event, a passing storm. But this is no storm. This is a sequel to ‘The Rats of Nimh’ directed by David Cronenberg. What we need is action, bold and ridiculous. Hire every hawk and owl from here to Perth. Import a division of ferrets from New Zealand. Unleash a desperate, last-ditch army of tabby cats, spayed or not. Or, and I say this with the sobriety of a man who’s had three gins too many, we accept our new rodent overlords and begin breeding giant pythons to keep them in check. It’s the Australian way, after all. Replace one nightmare with another, larger one.
So raise a glass, if you can find one not gnawed to pieces. The mice are coming, and they’re hungry. I’m off to the pub. At least the beer is safe. For now.
