"Two Billion" Rats Invade China Lake Towns

National Geographic News ^ | July 11, 2007 | By Stefan Lovgren in Wuhan, China

[JACKRUSSELL]

For the past two weeks residents living around China's second largest lake have been able to smell a rat—make that two billion rats.

When the Yangtze River flooded on June 23, the water level rose in Dongting Lake, which sits along the river south of Wuhan in central China's Hunan Province.

The flooding began flushing out rat holes around the lake, triggering a literal rat race for higher ground.

Since then farming communities in more than 20 counties near Dongting have been overrun, observers say.

"For the past week, the situation has been very serious," Tan Lulu, who works for the international conservation group WWF, told National Geographic News from WWF's Hunan office in Changsha.

Farmers are using everything from poison to hammers—and even their bare hands—to kill the rodents, Lulu noted.

"There are so many rats that you can kill three of them with one [strike]," she said, adding that the banks of the lake are carpeted with dead rats.

Rat Poison

About two billion rodents have been coursing through the region, according to Chinese media reports, although it's not clear how this number was determined.

The rats have ravaged at least 4 million acres (1.6 million hectares) of farmland by eating the roots and stems of crops, the state-run China Daily newspaper reported.

In response, several news reports note, residents in the district of Dahu have killed more than 2.3 million rats—or 90 tons of the rodents—since the invasion began.

To combat the problem, local authorities have distributed rat poison in the affected areas.

Sanitation staff has also been dispatched to prevent disease outbreaks. In some places around Dongting Lake, 2-foot-tall (0.6-meter-tall) concrete walls have been hastily built to keep the rodents away from farms.

"The current focus is on educating the villagers in protecting themselves while killing the rats, and supervising the local health situation," Peng Zaizhi, director of the emergency control division of the Hunan provincial disease prevention and control center, told the China Daily.

Environmental Degradation

Dongting Lake is officially considered to be 1,058 square miles (2,740 square kilometers). But the lake is a flood basin of the Yangtze River, and its actual size fluctuates with seasonal rains.

Lulu, of the WWF, said a drought preceding the recent flooding exacerbated the rat problem.

"The drought exposed land that used to be the lake, and the rodents took up residence there," she said.

"When that land became submerged, the rats fled to higher ground."

The region has also been affected by the cutting and replanting of trees for two paper mills near the lake.

"Dongting Lake used to be a beautiful place," Lulu said, "but it has become very polluted."

[GOP_Raider]

Hey, that could be a project for another Crispin Glover movie.

[Citizen Soldier]

Great, now we will be getting poison in our grains and rat meat in our frozen foods.

[samtheman]

Sweet and Sour Windfall.. Mystery meat egg rolls..

Freeze 'em up. Export 'em to America. Sell 'em in the Wal-Mart frozen food section, under a label like "Good'n'Tastey".

[Jimmy Valentine]

China is cursed.

[Daffynition]

Rats by Dr Seuss

If your ratty gets all scatty 'cos his coat is getting matty
And he's acting kinda batty now he doesn't look so natty
If he starts to get all chatty and to voice pratty demands
Then beware! You've got a bratty tatty ratty on your hands.

If your doe has had a go with all her bro' bucks in a row
And you've seen her face aglow and her belly grow with woe
If she's getting glad and gloating and gargantuous in girth
Then at any time you guess that your grand girl is gonna birth

If your buck has had no luck getting his lazy butt unstuck
And you pluck him from his hammock to a chorus of "You suck!"
If his flaccid furry form is in a squishy slug disguise
Then it's right to get this roly rotund rat some exercise.

[Daffynition]

"Sweet and Sour Windfall.. Mystery meat egg rolls.."

HAHAHA! Brilliant!

I found an old Victorian piece. This very anti-Chinese trade card uses the slogan "They Must Go" to refer to vermin and the Chinese. At the same time identifying the Chinese with rats and roaches and showing a Chinaman eating a rat on top of it all! Litho'd by Forbes of Boston.

[Malacoda]

Great — these rats (and the poisons used to kill ‘em) will be showing up in our food chain within weeks.

[mware]

[grey_whiskers]

Sanitation staff has also been dispatched to prevent disease outbreaks. In some places around Dongting Lake, 2-foot-tall (0.6-meter-tall) concrete walls have been hastily built to keep the rodents away from farms.

But Trent Lott (Jellyfish - MS) says walls don't work!

Cheers!