The business management philosophy that one person’s crisis is another’s opportunity may perhaps never have been taken to such bizarre extremes.
A plague of two billion mice in central China was described just days ago as being so bad that it resembled a scene from a horror movie, with hillsides turned black with rodents.
But in a remarkable display of entrepreneurship, businessmen are catching, shipping and selling the eastern field mice, also known locally as rats, to the city of Guangzhou, where restaurants are reportedly offering rodent banquets to diners notorious for their unusual tastes.
”Recently there have been a lot of rats … Guangzhou people are rich and like to eat exotic things, so business is very good,” the China News Service quoted a vendor as saying.
According to Beijing News, businessmen were offering six yuan (81 US cents) for a kilogram of live rodents.
The infestation was caused by some of the worst flooding in 50 years in central China. More than 400 people have died and more than three million have been forced to evacuate their homes. To ease pressure on rivers and plains, the Three Gorges dam released water to Dongting Lake in Hunan Province. After months of drought, the area was flooded, driving countless millions of rodents from their mouse holes.
Local villagers described their migration in terms of an army on the move, eating everything in their path. Entire crop fields were reportedly devoured in a single afternoon.
According to domestic media, the munching was so loud that it could be heard inside villagers’ homes.
In the ensuing war on rodents, local people beat hundreds of mice to death. Some used ferrets, others so much poison that more than 1 000 cats and chickens were also killed.
The Xinhua news agency reported that more than two million rodents have been killed. Their bodies — weighing about 90 tonnes in total — have been buried and covered with lime to prevent them spreading disease.
Although the infestation is reportedly the worst in 10 years, it is an annual occurrence during flood season. Hunan province is attempting to raise more than $800 000 to build a 40km wall to prevent future invasions. — Â