AUSTRALIA: The Mice That Roared

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"Hickory, dickory, dock, the mouse ran up the clock"—and if he knows what is good for him, the Melbourne mouse will run right down again, straight into his hole. Beset by a city-wide rise in food poisoning and mouse-nibbled documents in the Supreme Court, Melbourne health authorities have ordered all-out war on the city's mice. "Even pet mice must go," decreed Dr. Adrian Palmieri, the city's senior district health officer. "They breed like the rest and will mate with wild mice if they get the chance."

Palmieri, however, did not reckon with the power of the Australian National Mouse Club, a small but vocal group (57 humans and 2,861 mice) that is dedicated to the care, protection and love of Mus musculus, or the ordinary house mouse. "Disease carriers, indeed!" protests Mrs. Sheila Simpson, the club's president. "It's more likely that they will catch something from us. They're always getting tonsillitis or colds from the kids."

To plan their counterstrategy, the club members—and their mice—assembled recently in their Mousehouse, a suburban garage. Between discussions they looked at one another's pets and prepared for their next show—assuming of course that they have anything left to show. (The ideal mouse, according to Mouse Club guidelines, must be "long and slim in body, with a long, clean head, neither square nor too pointed at the nose. The eyes should be large, bold and prominent; the ears large, free from creases, carried erect and set wide apart.") The strategy—quiet diplomacy, rather than noisy, ratlike demonstrations—paid off. The health department at least agreed to investigate the club's case against a proposed law that would call for a maximum fine of $705 against anyone harboring a mouse.