Residents of Karumba, a picturesque fishing town in the Gulf of Carpentaria in far north Queensland, are waking up to the stench of thousands of rotting bodies every morning as their homes and beaches become overrun with a rat plague. You know, because snakes and flies having a population boom wasn’t horrific enough.
The long-haired native species has taken over the small town, with footage showing large swathes of rats (we’re talking of biblical proportions) swimming in the town’s river, before drowning and then clogging its beaches with their decaying bodies. Pictures on social media show the rats filling barrels, climbing into bins and scurrying along the ground.
“When the moon came over the town last night, the river was well and truly alive with the bodies of rats,” fisherman Brett Fallon told ABC News.
He said his boat becomes overrun with “at least 100” rats at night, with fishing charter owner Jemma Probert telling the publication she has to fight off rats from climbing onto her boats by running up its anchor.
“The stench along the waterways is intense,” she said, noting that the rats had expanded their territories and were now making their way into people’s backyards.
Winton, to the south of Karumba, experienced the rat plague earlier this year and with the swathes of rats came kite birds who flocked in such large numbers that they affected the landing of planes, ABC News reports.
The rat plague has actually been in effect since June, with the population moving across the state’s north and thriving due to a prosperous wet season. The critters have been eating their way through crops, destroying expensive equipment and contaminating water.
Residents on social media claimed the rats were cannibals and eating each other, with one person claiming there were “millions” of them.
“Every dead rat on the road had another three or four rats eating it. There was about a metre between dead rats. It was insane,” he wrote of rats in Cloncurry, 350km south of Karumba, per Yahoo! News.
“You drive between McKinlay and Winton at night and the ground is crawling with rats. They are that thick, they’re eating their own straight after they’re squished on the road,” said another.
So, where are the rats coming from?
“Food is driving that population boom and food comes from the primary production triggered by huge rainfall events,” University of Queensland associate professor in ecology, Luke Leung, said, per ABC News.
Considering the north is moving into another wet season, experts are concerned the plague may continue to thrive instead of eventually exhausting the food supply and dropping off as is normal for a plague.
For now, affected communities just have to wait it out.
