Chinese Rice Farmers Battle A Plague of Munching Mice

Massive Flooding Blamed for Infestation by Billions of Rodents

BINHU, China, July 14 -- It was early morning when an odd noise awoke Tao Qunxian, a farmer in this village on the banks of Dongting Lake in Hunan province. He looked out his front door to see his entire rice paddy had disappeared overnight. The culprit was a seasonal pest: the eastern field mouse, also referred to here as the rat.

Since they first appeared this year in mid-June, more than 2 billion field mice have been killed, according to state media reports. Three cities on the banks of Dongting Lake have been overwhelmed with millions of rodents fleeing water-logged homes, as parts of central and southern China suffer one of the worst flood seasons in 50 years.

"You can even hear them as they bite the rice -- chir chir chir. It's deafening," said Tao, the former party secretary of this village of 800, pausing briefly while helping replant a damaged rice field Saturday. At their peak, the mice can destroy a one-acre field in a single afternoon, he said.

Heavy rains have produced landslides and floods that have killed more than 400 people and caused more than $4 billion worth of damage this summer in Anhui, Henan, Hubei, Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces. Emergency workers have been handing out bags of flour and cooking oil to hundreds of thousands of displaced residents, and breaching dikes and diverting river water to relieve pressure on hard-hit areas.

Because of its perennial flooding problems, China has built scores of dams, including the controversial Three Gorges Dam, to help control flooding and generate power. Officials concede there are environmental concerns but insist the advantages outweigh the drawbacks.

Here in Hunan, Binhu's infestation is a reminder of how closely some Chinese communities are linked to nearby rivers and how the manipulation of those waterways can affect huge populations.

Because of a drought between September and June, the lake here receded early. "It seldom rained, and this created a haven for rats to live in and reproduce," said Xu Hongbin, the current village party secretary.

But the water was already low, because the Three Gorges Dam has reduced flows into the lake, village doctor Tao Zexian said. So last month when sluice gates were opened to relieve pressure from flooding in neighboring provinces, the suddenly rising lake sent billions of rodents scurrying into Binhu, like a scene from a horror movie.

"I don't remember how many there were, but there were so many I couldn't count them," said Tao Binfei, 65, a wheat and cotton farmer who also grows sesame, corn and sweet potatoes. "You can easily step on them just by walking on the road, there are so many."

Government officials provided a poison that would not harm humans or other animals. Villagers applied it to the banks of the lake, where the rodents lived, and delivered some to each household. But as the mice began to overrun Binhu, residents and village officials began to make their own homemade poison, which was 15 times cheaper and -- because it contained pesticides -- much more lethal.

As a result, the poison also killed about 1,000 cats, 100 dogs and several cows, chickens and pigs, villagers and state media said.

"We put the liquid poison with one or two tons of rice, and after combining them, we just spread it everywhere, spread it across the mountain," said Tao Qunxian, the former party secretary, sweeping his arm in a dramatic arc. "Nobody ever did any research about what's a safer poison to use. We just do it this way every time."