MICE

A few years ago at the Andamooka opal field, I awoke to a sharp bite on the ear. Out of the bed at 1,000 miles an hour, I jumped to discover the place was riddled with field mice. Believe me they were everywhere. Yes, a plague of mice had hit the town, for some reason, the mice had come into town from the desert on their way to some unknown destination. As in the past, I collected all the available buckets and quarter filled them with water and then placed them aroundthe floor along the edges of benches, tables and any any place that would be a good drop off point. Next was the empty drink bottles (glass in those days). With this lined up, I smeared the necks with butter and placed some cheese and cold meat in the opening. After placing the bottles on the bench, table and the other positions around the camp, I turned off the light and back to bed to listen to the constant and never ending flop of mice falling into the buckets of water. This lasted for a good 3 days until the mice had moved on to some other place. The average contents of the buckets upon emptying them was 75 mice every 3-4 hours. This was not a large plague of mice but the buckets had done the job well. People don't really know what some of us opal miners put up with to obtain the wonderful opal that you see in the city stores, like the mice. We also encounter the hazards not so friendly spiders, scorpions, snakes, centepedes and not to mentionthe endless supply of red-back-spiders and moscitoes. Then again, one learns to live with this environment with a smile.

STORIE....LIST