#Rodent plague leaves town covered in ‘carpet of mice’

If you give a mouse a cookie — they might take over your town.

Southeast Australia has been overrun by an ongoing plague of mice, which have attacked livestock, invaded residential homes and depleted supplies of mouse-killing accessories.

“If you start noticing them, the numbers can build up very, very quickly,” Councillor Reg Kidd, mayor of Orange, New South Wales, told Prime7 of the pestilence. Orange is one of many New South Wales towns that have been overrun by the the opportunistic vermin over the past two days.

What’s being described as a bone-chilling “carpet of mice” appears to be tied to the weather. Rain early last year may have led to a breeding frenzy — followed by a drought that potentially helped the populations flourish, said one store owner who has sold out of traps.

Skin-crawling footage — taken at night — exposes a biblical swarm of rodents scurrying across a road like a furry flash flood. Meanwhile, one family reported culling as many as 200 in less than two days.

The infestation has gotten so bad that one farmer in the rural town of Coonamble was forced to sleep in her adult children’s vacant bedrooms, reported Australia’s News.com.

“I can’t sleep here [in her own room], but you can’t sleep in the car because they were in the car, too,” said Anne Cullen, whose fun-sized squatters have decimated her stockpile of hay. “I found my [daughter‘s] bedroom to have the least mouse poo and it was the most sealed-off room, so I’ve been sleeping in there.”

The pests are more than just a mere nuisance. Mice are known to make nests in hay, where their feces can cause illness and even death in livestock that ingest it. They’re known to carry and spread leptospirosis, a potentially fatal bacterial disease that can cause everything from meningitis to liver failure, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.