Oz Faces Plagues Of Locusts, Plague Of Dingoes . . . Plague Of Mice?

Sounds like Pestapalooza in the Land Down Under!

SYDNEY - "What's worse? A hundred billion starving locusts, a billion ravenous mice, or a million flesh-eating wild dogs? Australia is fighting simultaneous swarms of countless locusts, rampaging attacks on sheep by wild dogs and new outbreaks of mice. The island continent's vast uncontrolled spaces make it one of the countries hardest hit by pests.

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Farmers who have lived through a uniquely Australian mice plague say there is nothing worse. Billions of mice get into everything, eating crops as well as home electrical wiring, televisions and computers from the inside out. Farming families have been reduced to placing bed legs in buckets of water. But not even that keeps all the mice out of the family blankets, meaning that many face the horrifying task of shaking mice out of beds throughout the night. Outbreaks of mice in the Darling Downs area of southern Queensland are the worst since a 1995 plague, when billions of rodents devastated A$18 million worth of crops. Authorities say they could get much worse.

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Queensland grains grower Murray Jones said locusts were the worst pest. "A swarm of locusts five kilometers (three miles) to six kilometers long and half a kilometer wide can come into a crop that's standing three feet high and eat it overnight," Jones told Reuters by telephone from his property as swarms of locusts attacked green fields of sorghum grain. "In many cases it's worse than a bushfire. It just wipes everything out," he said after months of swarm attacks. Officials have even felt it necessary to reassure city dwellers that locusts don't eat washing as it hangs out to dry - unless the insects are really hungry and the clothes are green.

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But attacks on sheep by wild descendants of European dogs which have interbred with native dingoes are clearly the result of the arrival in Australia of European settlers. Woolgrower Robert Pietsch says millions of feral dogs, which are extending their territory from central Queensland to coastal and urban areas, are the most feared predator for sheep. Every morning farmers are finding more and more sheep on the populated side of Australia's 3,700-mile dingo fence, an improved version of the original rabbit fence, with large chunks bitten from their rear ends and sides. "Locusts will come and go, a lot of pests will come and go, but wild dogs (are) an ongoing problem. (It is a) very gut-wrenching and emotional problem," Pietsch said."

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http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24919/story.htm

sure this isn't happening in Crawford, TX?

We have had them in history and they are also pretty bad.

are very frightening things..everything in sight is shorn to the ground in minutesby locusts.
I think you would be as well if you were in the middle of them.

and mice are a nightmare, they eat anything, plastic bags , the lot !
I think there are herds of wild camels running rampant as well in Oz.

> and mice are a nightmare, they eat anything, plastic bags, the lot !

So keep them in a landfill and you have a biological compacting device
that reduces everything to small pellets ...

No? :-)