China: Rodent population problem · Global Voices
John Kennedy

The top featured story at Sina blogs yesterday was the rodent invasion into the areas surrounding Dongting lake in southern Hunan province precipitated by flooding on the Yangtze river, and the resulting extermination campaign.
Among discussion were the reasons the rodent population has flourished in the south, as well as what's being done with the corpses, ninety tons of which have already been collected, according to officials, with two billion rodents running loose in total [zh]. Video and photos have been posted and, notes Sina blogger ‘Everywhere is my Home‘, the area affected spans four million mu—just more than 1,000 square miles—which includes twenty-two counties, leaving the local flood protection dike and eight million mu of rice paddies at serious risk:
据分析，洞庭鼠灾的原因在于近年湖南受广州菜肴的影响，造成”口味蛇”的时兴，蛇被大量拿来”果腹”，而老鼠的另一个天地”猫头鹰”由于当地流传的偏方『治偏头痛』也残遭杀害。缺少天敌的田鼠们，繁殖、破坏起来自然”随心所欲”。
当读了这篇新闻报道的时候，想到了前不久在上海发生的一件事，840只流浪猫（其中也有些家猫）被上海小动物保护者在上海至广州的高速公路闸口处解救下来（这些猫是从浙江、安徽等地被猫贩子收购下来送往广州餐馆里做菜肴用的），并在各个论坛里发帖子征集药品、食物来救治这些可怜的小生命。而当时的警察却以猫不属于国家保护动物而拒绝出警，更可恨的是猫贩子手持伪造的林业部门文件，叫嚣着谁搬猫就打死谁。此外，第二天又有辆运猫车闯关去了广州。
为什么会把这两件事情放在一起，还有个重要的原因：新闻报道里说湖南省农业厅厅长程海波提出的化学灭鼠方案，主要是投放毒饵，用溴敌隆、敌鼠钠盐等杀鼠剂配制毒饵。而大通湖区、乡两级政府拨付应急防治经费购买鼠药和饵料，投放毒饵毒杀害鼠40多吨灭鼠。
要有点常识的人都知道，化学灭鼠产生的效果是不错，但对当地的生态环境造成更大的负面影响是无法估量的。由此可以看出，政府政绩思想又一次出来做了跳梁小丑的角色。
现在让我们设想一个美丽的结局吧：这840只猫如果在洞庭湖生活的话，那里还会有鼠灾的发生吗？
最后要问一句：广州的居民们，当你们吃着小动物的尸体，看到这样的新闻，你们还吃的下吗？？？
Let's just imagine a nice finale, though: if those 840 cats lived in Dongting, would there still have been the rat disaster?
One last question, to Guangzhou residents: when you're eating the corpses of little animals, having seen this news, are you still able to swallow them down???
Not all of them residents, judging from sentiment expressed by Southern Metropolis Daily blogger Arden Deng:
“…whenever there are people bombarding against the Cantonese “ungraceful” wild diet, I wish to distance myself from the Cantonese by declaring myself a Hakka—as I am. I know it doesn’t work though, as not much difference remains between the two. With the flourishing restaurant industry, every kind of dish is up for exploitation, to be pushed up against the common sense. For example, there is little daily connection between pangolins and human beings, so it is understandable why it became a dish in a sense. But rats? They’re a daily-visible creature with a dirty and notorious reputation. Leeches won’t even take rats as delicious diet, so what kind of humans do? I really feel sorry for them.”
Other bloggers made the association between this campaign [zh] and that of the Cultural Revolution era, then to wipe out ‘the four pests’.
‘The Demon of Justice‘ blogger goes back [zh] to the underlying problems that gave rise to this situation:
据报道称，这次鼠灾主要是由于人们的贪吃，使得蛇、鹰、猫头鹰等鼠类天敌被吃得光光的，几乎找不到这些动物的影子了。老鼠所到之处，粮食像被收割机割过一番，成片成片地倒下。当地人拿着木棍、铲子之类物品去打老鼠，一棒子能打死两三只，一铲子下去七八只老鼠倒地，几天工夫竟灭了90吨的老鼠！而尽管如此，老鼠却依旧不见少，仍然大肆游荡着，农田继续遭殃，每户人家也都继续提心吊胆地生活，房屋设施不断遭到破坏。
其实何苦呢？人类啊，要是少吃点，怎么会落得如此下场！我也搞不懂，怎么这么多人喜欢吃野味啊，难道味道就真的这么棒？现在生活条件好了，吃的也丰富了，可是那些鱼啊肉啊，难道就不能吃了么？非得下海捉海豚，上天逮鸿鹄不成？很多人说野味鲜过家养的，我看未必全是真的。假使人类以前养的是鸿鹄，而不是鸡鸭，我想现在也有许多人去争着吃鸡鸭了吧。有人说是去尝尝鲜，好啦，你已经尝过了，何必要把它们吃到绝种呢？如果你觉得此味实乃天上的珍馐，又何不自己去养殖呢，这样也不会吃绝种了啊。知道伐木必先种树，却怎么不懂吃食先得养殖呢？