Spain may zap, burn, crush plague of rodents
Daniel Woolls
Associated Press
Aug. 15, 2007 12:00 AM
MADRID, Spain - What's a country to do with a millions-strong plague of crop-munching rodents? Ideas abound for Spain's Castille-Leon region to quell its infestation: Burn them. Drown them. Choke them with engine exhaust. Squish them with a rolling pin attached to a plow.
Then there's this doozy from a government veterinarian: Zap these mouselike animals called voles with earsplitting ultrasound, using a military pincer movement to herd them together for a death blow with water or fire.
The government of Castille-Leon, a northern region that is one of Spain's agricultural heartlands, began burning harvested farmland last week to try to wipe out an invasion that has now mushroomed into an agricultural nightmare.
Farm organizations initially estimated the mysterious vole infestation at 7.5 million wee intruders. But Jose Carlos Pinero, a veterinarian with the Castille-Leon regional health department and proponent of the ultrasound eradication idea, said Tuesday that scientists now believe there are hundreds of millions of the pests - perhaps as many as 700 million.
The government says it is flummoxed as to what is causing the infestation.
Pinero presented his ultrasound plan to the government on Monday and said he expects an answer soon.
It would work like this: zap the animals with ultrasound devices - inaudible to humans but excruciating for voles - from two directions, shooing them toward a designated point where they could be drowned or burned.
Pablo Villar, mayor of the town of Villalar de los Comuneros, population 500, tried out a huge iron tube tied the back of a farm plow. The idea is to loosen the soil and uncover the voles' hideouts, then crush them with the roller.
They're probably a pain to skin and gut for all the meat you'd get off of one. But again, if they're "grain fed" they might be big for voles. 
