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Governments remain silent on mouse plague

And neither are thousands of people on farms, towns and cities across southeast Australia.

For we are in the grips of an awful mouse plague, the worst in 50 years.

Not that you would know it unless the rodents are living with you.

The mice are now such a part of the furniture - literally, in some horrible cases - that little attention is being paid to them.

But they are a big problem.

For months now there have been widespread reports of mice eating their way through anything they can get their teeth into.

Crops have been destroyed, houses invaded and even disease spread in their unrelenting march across the country.

Farmers have delayed sowing crops because they know the mice will eat the seed before they have the chance to germinate.

It's so bad the Australian Oilseeds Federation estimates 25,000 tonnes of the expected canola crop will be lost.

"(Mice) attacks have either decimated the crop, or impacted it so severely, that it is not viable," the federation said this week.

In the Riverina of southern NSW, grain growers are spending up to $30,000 to rid their crops of mice, with up to 90 per cent of the region's canola crops invaded by mice.

Estimates say there are up to 6000 mice a hectare.

And they are not just in the paddocks.

A colleague reports his sister caught 70 mice in her home near Hay in southern NSW last week -in just one night.

The Weekly Times has even reported the weird case of mice attacking pigs.

We've run pictures of three mice in one trap, one mouse in three traps and the bloke in Werribee who has been catching them in old rabbit traps.

Everyone is clamouring for baits, the manufacturers of which can't keep up.

The Government was forced this week to allow permits for some bait to be manufactured without the normal checks and balances.

That came amid reports some backyard operators had cranked into gear, making some potent - and dangerous - brews.

Allegedly the users of this stuff nearly met the same fate as the unlucky mice exposed to it.

But there was a lot of arm twisting behind the scenes for governments - both federal and state - to make this decision.

For other than that there has been little response from governments.

Cast your mind back to September last year when we were all in a blind panic about the impending locust plague.

The former state government jumped into action with aerial spraying of public land and rebates for farmers to buy chemicals.

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