They could sense their ship was sinking as the water level rose.
They decided to desert, all 2 billion of them, to dry land.
The exodus began on June 23 when the Yangtze River flooded, raising the water
level in Dongting Lake and submerging the rat holes on the islands of the
country's second-biggest freshwater lake.
So they invaded about 20 counties, mainly around Yueyang
and Yiyang cities in Hunan Province near the lake, leaving a trail of
destruction in 1.6 million hectares of farmland. 
The rodents, which previously survived on water reeds, nibbled away the roots
and stems of crops, leaving them barren.
"It's like the mopping up by enemy troops in wars. We have nothing left,"
said 65-year-old local resident Yin Xinjin as he gazed wistfully at a region
famous for "its fragrance of rice and melon in harvest season".
But the residents, humans that is, are not taking it lying down.
They have become adept at smelling a rat and ferreting them out to beat them
to death with clubs and shovels.
Residents in Dahu district alone are reported to have killed more than 2.3
million - or 90 tons of the rodents - since late last June.
Officialdom, too, rose to the occasion. Rat poison has been dispatched to the
affected areas and sanitation staff are on hand to prevent any epidemic
outbreak.
"The current focus is on educating the villagers in protecting themselves
while killing the rats, and supervising the local health situation," said Peng
Zaizhi, director of the emergency control division of the Hunan provincial
disease prevention and control center.
No case of human infection has been reported so far, said Peng.
The huge volume of rat corpses are either being cremated or buried deep in
deserted areas, said Peng.
Zuo Shigeng, dean of the Yueyang vegetation protection station, said in a
telephone interview that the lake's receding waterline during the first half of
this year left the islands dry for a long time, which gave the rats more time to
reproduce and multiply.
"It is the largest rat disaster the lakeside region has experienced in the
last 10 years."
If only they could have called in the Pied Piper.
(China Daily 07/11/2007 page1)
