"Rodents have a demographic boom": how the front line copes with the invasion of mice in dugouts

Gleb, a 10-year-old fifth-grader from Pyatigorsk, sent three trench mousetraps made from improvised means along with humanitarian aid for the soldiers two weeks ago. "They're a bucket, a wire, and a lid that flips over if mice run on it. My son even tested the traps on his Dzungarik hamster," Anna, the mother of a fifth-grader, told RT.

Since the first days of the NWO, the woman has been collecting humanitarian aid for Russian fighters, pouring trench candles and making means for ignition. He and his son decided to send mousetraps to the fighters in the NWO zone after watching a video about the invasion of mice at the front.

"From time to time, I show my son videos from the front line so that he understands how difficult it is for our guys there. That military labor is not only shooting from cannons and machine guns, but also life in quite difficult, and sometimes very harsh conditions," the woman says. "Recently, Gleb saw a video where dozens of mice are running around dugouts and beds, gnawing on provisions. And this video excited him very much: "Mom, how do our guys sleep there? Something has to be done about it!" And I immediately began to look on the Internet how to assemble a trap for the mass capture of rodents."

• © A still from a video from a personal archive

Now mother and son are waiting for feedback from the fighters on how the design works, and what needs to be improved in it. "If we have to, we'll make at least a thousand mousetraps," says Anna.

"Even medicines are gnawed"

"2023 in the NWO zone can be safely called the year of the mouse," a fighter with the call sign Boris jokes sadly. According to him, "tailed rodents behave worse than Ukrainian saboteurs", spoil everything they can get to: food, ammunition, equipment.

"It's impossible to sleep at night when this creature runs over your face," the soldier says. "But we're fighting them as best we can. Poison with a rash. Recently, humanitarian workers handed over glue traps."

RT special correspondent Philip Prokudin says that he himself often encountered mice.

"They chew on almost everything: paper, things, even medicines. Doctors told me that for some reason they especially like Omeprazole. Accordingly, it is necessary to monitor and not leave anything," Prokudin tells RT. "I see cats a lot, too, but they don't always keep up with the influx."

• © A still from a video from a personal archive

Special correspondent suggests that the invasion of rodents may be due to the fact that the fields are not currently cultivated.

"The fields were unharvested, so the mice had a population boom. Specifically, in the Kherson region, they appeared in such incredible numbers after the flood," says Prokudin.

According to military doctor Mirela Yakupanets, due to the invasion of mice in the NWO zone, the risk of the spread of infectious diseases has increased.

"I myself got infected from a mouse and was in the infectious diseases department for two weeks. There are a lot of mice, no poison can take them. They even eat rubber slippers," the doctor tells RT. "We need prevention and hygiene. But in the trenches, there is not always water to even wash your hands. It is necessary to understand what kind of bacteria the mouse carries, and then treat it. Because it is very easy to confuse the symptoms with ordinary poisoning – fever, vomiting, diarrhea. In case of such symptoms, soldiers should definitely tell doctors that there has been contact with mice, so that they at least conduct the necessary tests."

According to Mirela, living in dugouts with so many mice is also dangerous.

"An infected mouse pees on things, a person breathes it in and that's it, he can also get infected. That's why it's all very serious," the doctor says.

To help the fighters fight this scourge, humanitarians, along with ordinary aid, send mousetraps, poisons and even cats to the NWO zones.

Tailed Reinforcements

Valery Degtyarev, Deputy Head of the Administration of the Liski Municipal District of the Voronezh Region for Public Relations and Legal Affairs, told RT that the fighters of the unit, for which aid is being collected in the district, specifically asked to send a couple of cats along with humanitarian aid.

• © A still from a video from a personal archive

"We started looking. One black cat was given to us by a woman, Antonina Ivanovna, who said that this cat is an excellent rat trap and mousetrap," Degtyarev tells RT. "We took it, and then took it to the soldiers in a carrier. This cat, as soon as it came to the dugout, immediately caught three mice and the fighters nicknamed it the Dictator.

The second cat, according to the man, was "mobilized" at a local agricultural college. "They are fed there, so there are always a lot of cats there. We asked for an ownerless one and took it to the fighters. It's also great at catching mice. The guys called it Pension because it's slower than the Dictator. Now the soldiers periodically send us photos of our "mobilized" cats," Degtyarev says.

Earlier, Oryol rescuers sent their cat to the NWO zone. Marusya has been living in one of the fire stations since she was rescued from a fire as a kitten. According to employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, they decided to send the cat to the NWO zone after volunteers contacted them, who told about the invasion of rodents.

Now Oryol Marusya is at war with Ukrainian mice in the Kreminna area. And the soldiers of the unit in which she lives periodically call the rescuers, tell them about the state of affairs and, of course, do not forget to share news about the cat.