In what can only be described as a biblical plague with better PR, Australia is currently being overrun by a tsunami of furry fiends, a whiskered Waterloo, a mousepocalypse of unprecedented proportions. Scientists are baffled, farmers are weeping into their wheat, and frankly, I suspect the whole affair is a poorly disguised metaphor for something far more sinister. Perhaps the mice are actually miniature critics, escaped from the bowels of a Canberra think tank, come to feast on our hubris before moving on to the op-eds.
These aren't your garden-variety vermin, the kind that haunt London tube stations with a chip on their shoulder and a half-eaten kebab in their paw. No, these are post-apocalyptic mice, driven by some primal, perhaps gin-related, urge to consume everything in their path. They eat through grain silos like they're butter, chew through wiring with the enthusiasm of a toddler in a toy shop, and have been known to infiltrate homes, climbing into beds and nibbling on the ears of sleeping farmers. It’s a level of audacity that would make a tabloid journalist blush.
The scale is staggering. Farmers report fields writhing with grey bodies, a living carpet of squeaking destruction. Harvests are decimated, stored grain devoured, and the psychological toll is immense. One farmer, interviewed through a haze of despair and pesticide fumes, described finding a nest of mice in his tractor's engine block, having used the wiring as a sort of luxury charter flight to the countryside. His eyes had the thousand-yard stare of a man who has seen too much, who has bartered with the spirits for a decent crop only to find the deities have a sick sense of humour.
Scientists, bless their lab-coated hearts, are throwing up their hands. They've launched studies, deployed cameras, and probably consulted a few oracles. The leading theory involves an abundance of grain, but that's like saying the Titanic sank because of wetness. The real mystery is why now, why this magnitude, and why in a country that already has everything trying to kill you. It’s as if the universe decided Australia needed a new national sport, and competitive mouse-swatting was the chosen contender.
And let us not forget the government’s response. Because when nature unleashes a plague, you can always count on a politician to propose a committee. Or a task force. Or, in this case, a distressingly small amount of money towards a poison that might or might not work, depending on which lobbyist you ask. There’s talk of releasing the poison into the wild, which will surely do wonders for the ecosystem. I await with bated breath the sequel: “Australia’s Devastating Owl Plague Baffles Scientists.” But until then, we are forced to endure the spectacle of a nation being systematically dismantled by creatures with the IQ of a stale cracker.
In the end, this is just another chapter in the ongoing absurdity of existence. It’s a reminder that no matter how many times we build, plan, and engineer, there’s always a mouse ready to chew through the blueprint. And as I sip my gin and tonic, staring at the wall as if it might hide a rodent, I can’t help but admire their tenacity. They don’t know they’re supposed to fail. They just keep coming, an unstoppable army of tiny, fuzzy, wheat-munching renegades.
