Mum's shocking find on toddler's sock
A mum has made a disgusting discovery inside her son's gumboot.
Lauren Lieschke, from Beckom in the NSW Riverina region, wrote on Facebook the family cat left something in her 17-month-old son’s gumboot and shared a photo of it on Facebook.
Squashed onto the bottom of the toddler's sock was the remains of a dead mouse.
But by the time the mum had found it the rodent was squashed and half-eaten.
“He (the boy) didn’t complain,” she wrote.
“He was just happy to be out playing in muddy puddles.”
“Note to self... check boots every day.”
Ms Lieschke and her family are just some of the people coping with the mouse plague affecting NSW and southern parts of Queensland.
They have been running rampant through large tracts of inland NSW and parts of southern Queensland since last year, destroying crops and causing significant damage to tonnes of stored hay and grain. The damage has already cost $500 million at the farm gate.
Other people on Facebook added they’re also finding mice in odd places.
One woman wrote her son also found a mouse in his shoe but he “swore like a trooper”.
“He’s 28,” she wrote.
Others called the find “revolting” and “terrible”.
One man shared a photo of his boot which also contained a dead mouse.
Actions taken to kill mice
A farmer was recently filmed taking drastic action to kill mice on his property using a what appears to be a grain conveyor to drop them into a burning barrel.
He was criticised but questioned exactly how people should kill the mice in a humane way.
Some farmers have used rat bait to try and kill them but that solution has also come at a terrible and heartbreaking cost.
The NSW government announced earlier this week it will provide up to $100 million in rebates to farmers purchasing the mouse control chemical zinc phosphide during a plague of the rodent blighting rural and regional communities.
The state's farmers will be offered a rebate of 50 per cent on their purchase of zinc phosphide — which is already tax deductible — up to $10,000.
Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall said in a statement the government was also chipping in $5 million to help transport zinc phosphide to Australia.
Peak body NSW Farmers welcomed the announcement and said it would help farmers manage the escalating costs of the mouse plague.
"It's common sense to support the use of an immediately available chemical which carries fewer secondary poisoning and environmental risks than alternatives," Vice President Xavier Martin said in a statement.
with AAP
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