Aussie snake INVASION to follow army of mice as rodents bring out plague of serpents on the hunt
FEARS over a massive invasion of snakes have been sparked as experts warn the serpents will follow the plague of mice in Australia.
New South Wales has been overrun by tens of millions of rampaging rodents stretching 1,000km from Brisbane to Melbourne.
The explosion of mice has caused immense damage to the country’s eastern coast, decimating crops and chomping their way through food storage units.
But now experts have warned that the huge influx of mice will attract an army of snakes to the area.
“After the mice, the snakes will follow,” Gerard Dallow, from Micropest in Sydney, told Nine.
He said the infestation of mice was common for South Australia, but not for New South Wales.
“The mice aren’t likely to leave the food sources and head into the city.”
Luckily for farmers, who have seen their crops destroyed by the blighters, snakes won’t cause more damage.
But the serpents could still pose a threat to humans as around 100 snake species in Australia are venomous.
The mice have invaded homes, schools and hospitals as they thrive after heavy rain and hot and dry spells led to a bumper harvest in Australia.
And the vice president of the New South Wales Farmers’ Association said the desperate rodents have now started eating each other when they run out of food.
“When they run out of food, when they run out of seeds to eat they start cannibalising, they start eating each other,” Martin told ITV News.
“They’re pretty disgusting animals and of course they’ve taken over a lot of our homes, our sheds, our vehicles, our tractors, we’ve had machinery burn.
“We had a house burn just north of us last night that was apparently due to mice.
“Look, even in this house here they ate the hose at the back of the dishwasher, so when the dishwasher ran it flooded the kitchen.”
Martin added: “They shut down 44 of our telecommunication towers on Monday across the southern half of New South Wales.
“They shut down one of our key government servers in one of the departments today so they couldn’t respond.
“The mice are into everything. If I walk out of the door there now and stand still they’ll climb out the outside of my trousers and inside of my trousers, they’re just running about everywhere.”
Experts have warned “without a concerted baiting effort in the next few weeks this could easily turn into a two-year plague event”.
Farmers have been sharing images and viral videos showing mice pouring out of grain feeders and storage plants.
“The state government’s assistance package is impractical, dysfunctional and weeks away, which is not helping farmers who need support right now to drive mouse numbers down and break this horrible unrelenting cycle,” Martin said.
Last week New South Wales government secured 5,000 litres of bromadiolone – bait that’s usually illegal on a large scale – to help with the infestation.
Environmentalists were concerned that while bromadiolone kills mice, the poison in their bodies could kill their predators – like wedge-tailed eagles and owls.
It comes after a hotel owner was left fighting for his life after catching a deadly disease from the mice infestation.
Trevor Hardie, 70, caught leptospirosis – a bacterial infection that is found in the rodents’ urine – that could have killed him within a matter of days.
“I couldn’t walk, I’d sweat all night, my kidneys and liver packed it in … it was the sickest I’d ever felt in my life, I wouldn’t wish it on anybody,” he told Australia’s Daily Telegraph.
After contracting the disease in late April, he suffered from a leaky heart, liver failure and acute kidney failure.
Hardie is warning people to make sure houses and shops are clean to avoid also becoming infected.
“All it takes is to have (mice) scurrying around in a shed, grain silo, or a home, they pee everywhere and you touch it somehow… it knocked me off my feet for weeks,” he said.
‘NIGHTMARE’
Elsewhere, a family home burned to the ground after rampaging rodents munched through wiring.
Rebekah Ward, a mum-of-three, said the stomach-churning infestation resulted in “mice jumping from the roof” to flee the flames.
She recalled how her family had been repeatedly attacked by the hungry – and growing population – of mice, which was impossible to eradicate.
Ward said it was a “nightmare” as the furry rodents “crawl over the kids at night”.
“They are in our shoes, they are on our benches, they are everywhere,” she said.
“They eat the food. We’ve had to put the food into a toolbox. They come through the lounge. They will bite you on the back. They are a nightmare.”
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The massive mouse army is now marching on Sydney amid shocking reports of people being bitten in their beds.
A government-funded MouseAlert website shows sightings have doubled since March – with a surge in cases in and around Sydney.
Channel 10 News Sydney claimed the mice could now be “marching towards” Australia’s biggest city to “invade” by August.