Thousands of mice in the roof Regional families struggle as mouse plague drags on with no end in sight
A year ago, farmers across New South Wales started to notice more mice than usual popping up on their farms.
Key points:They had no idea it was the start of a plague that would cause them severe stress and crop losses, and leave them with huge financial burdens.
The plague has now stretched into Victoria, Queensland and even South Australia, but the crisis isn't just hurting the farmers â€" it is also impacting entire communities.
New Mudgee parents Lucinda and Tim Flynn's introduction to parenthood has been completely disrupted as they try and keep their baby Charlotte safe from the uncontrollable mouse infestation.
"When the mice were really bad, I kept finding mouse poo in her bassinet, so we ended up getting a mosquito cover to stop them coming in," Ms Flynn said.
"It was pretty awful to know the mice had been in her bed.
"We thought they were climbing up the video monitor cord up into the bassinet so we quickly got rid of that.
"I've heard of other people putting buckets of water under the cot legs but we couldn't do that with this bassinet."
Time meant to be spent with their baby was replaced with constant cleaning and sanitising.
"There's mouse poo all through her clothes and toys; her books in her bedroom have been eaten, mice in the roof would wake her," Ms Flynn said.
"You want to keep your child safe and clean and have everything nice for them, it's been so hard."
The new mum said the mouse plague has taken a huge toll on her mental health.
"Everyone tells you parenthood is really tough on your mental health, but I could have had 20 babies compared to living through a mouse plague," she said.
"Being a new mum, you're sleep deprived, worried about everything to do with your baby. But my biggest worry was if I was going to find a mouse in her bassinet or a mouse in her nappy.
"It isn't a normal worry any parent should have to have â€" the safety of their child from a mouse plague."
Supplied: Kylie Jordison
)Ms Flynn said she struggles to sleep at night, as thousands of mice crawl through her roof and walls.
"It's so noisy â€" we would have had thousands in the roof. That was really heartbreaking," she said.
"I've gotten used to sleeping with a pillow over my head to stop the noise and to stop them running over my face."
Many had hoped the mice would have disappeared during the winter, but that hasn't happened yet.
"We were hoping the rain and cold would deter them. They've definitely calmed down but they're definitely still here," Ms Flynn said.
"We're worried about what will happen in the spring because there's such high numbers at the moment.
"It's not going to be good.
"No-one should have to live like this. We feel pretty helpless. But if we ask for help, what do we ask for?"
A threat to human healthEarlier this year, Darrell Jordison, a farmer in Central West region of NSW, almost died from a rare mouse-borne disease.
Doctors diagnosed Mr Jordison with lymphocytic choriomeningitis (LCM), an extremely rare rodent-borne viral infectious disease that presents as a form of meningitis.
"I was the first person ever to contract it in Australia," he said.
ABC News: Olivia Ralph
)Mr Jordison's doctors didn't expect him to survive, but an anti-inflammatory steroid saved his life.
"I had quite a big infection in my brain fluid and spinal cord that the doctors treated quite quickly. There was a large amount of inflammation around my brain," he said.
Mr Jordison is still experiencing a ringing in his ears and some memory loss.
"They were worried about brain damage, loss of sight, loss of hearing, all those associated things with having that much pressure placed on your brain," he said.
"It's pretty serious. I'm lucky to be here.
"The way the doctors put it, I'm extremely lucky to come out of it alive and [with] very little side effects considering how sick I was."
He is encouraging people who live in areas affected by the mouse plague to take it seriously, by looking for signs of poor health that may be caused by mice.
For Mr Jordison, the problem began in July last year when mice first started appearing on his Gulargambone farm in increasing numbers.
Supplied: Kylie Jordison
)"You keep baiting and baiting but the numbers were so great, you didn't think you were getting on top of it at all," he said.
"It was just relentless â€" as quick as you could bait them they were breeding up and the numbers were back like you weren't baiting at all."
He was so busy with his job and trying to control the plague on his property that he didn't notice he was getting sick.
"I was lethargic and quite sore in the joints leading up to around Christmas time, but I got really sick February 14," he said.
"That was the start of me feeling sick. I had no idea it was going to end up being from mice."
Mr Jordison wants the community to be extremely vigilant about sanitation after handling traps or mice.
"It would have been as easy as not washing my hands after dealing with a trap, or just a bit of urine on a bit of hay, or the string on hay and feeding it out," Mr Jordison said.
"The disease is transmitted by aerosol contact as well. It could've been airborne and I could have just breathed in a bit of contaminated fur."
Mr Jordison said he was shocked when doctors informed him mice carry over 35 diseases and LCM is carried by one in three household mice.
ABC New England North West: Donal Sheil
)He is currently the subject of a Westmead Hospital study to learn more about the rare disease and hopefully help the treatment of any future cases.
Mr Jordison said that if he had waited another 12 hours to seek medical attention, his doctors said he would have likely died.
"I'm your typical Australian male where you think you're 10-foot tall and bullet-proof and you can just take a couple of Nurofen and go to bed and you'll be right in the morning," he said.
"That phone call to the ambulance saved my life."
How to end a mouse plagueA team of mouse experts in Canberra are working around the clock to find a solution to the plague, especially before spring arrives.
They are concerned mice populations will explode as the weather warms up, encouraging the rodents to breed.
"With the onset of winter, we've seen mice stop breeding probably about six or eight weeks ago. And that's led to the mouse numbers plateauing through the wintertime," said Steve Henry from the CSIRO.
"But when they start breeding again, that rate of increase is really rapid.
"So you go from a situation where you think you don't have many mice around to one, where they're absolutely all over the place really, really quickly."
Supplied: Kylie Jordison
)Kevin Oh from Macquarie University is a research scientist who has also been studying the plague.
"By all historical records and data that I've looked at it, it seems like this is a really, really unprecedented event in the recent decades," Mr Oh said.
"I've been really just shocked at how severe the outbreak has been so far."
Scientists have investigated if there are any other chemicals or poisons that could be more effective in helping to end the plague.
The current poison in use, Zinc Phosphide, remains the best option, however farmers will soon begin trialling if doubling the bait will increase its efficacy.
Research into biological controls to drive down mice numbers is also underway in South Australia, but that is a long term solution that is still in the early phase, according to Mr Oh.
The research, which has received funding from the New South Wales Government, is exploring how mice can be manipulated to only give birth to male offspring to stop breeding.
"We might be able to manipulate the genome of mice then and we might be able to essentially affect their fertility in a way that could help control the populations," said Dr Oh.
"It's yet to be proven in the lab, but it's a possibility that's been explored with other pest species such as mosquitoes."
Watch this story tonight on 7.30 on ABC TV and iview.
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