'Expert' in trapping field mice in Nghe An

Early winter, the weather is cold, after a quick lunch, Mr. Cao Van Nam (Hamlet 1, Dien An Commune, Dien Chau District) puts on a coat, puts the mousetrap cage in a sack, and heads straight to the fields with his old motorbike. Brushing aside the knee-high weeds and the loose soil under his feet, in just a moment, hundreds of mousetraps have been set.

Mr. Nam is considered a "master" of mouse trapping in Dien Chau district, and has been in the profession for 5 years now. In agricultural production, more than half of a person's life is spent in the fields, and seeing mice destroying crops is heartbreaking. Corn fields in the milk stage have their cobs chewed to pieces and plants broken; peanut fields with full grains are also dug up and devastated...

People used rat poison and traps, and the local government launched a campaign to kill rats to protect crops, but it was ineffective. In the area, there were agents who bought live rats and rat meat. He thought, why don't I go trap rats to sell, both to protect my fields from destruction and to earn extra income.

Rat holes are easy to detect because outside the hole there is a small pile of soil pushed out by the rats, so you can use a shovel to dig deep into the hole to catch them. However, this method has low results because rats are very smart, have many escape routes and can easily damage the banks and fields. Or you can use burning straw and smoke to fumigate, pour water into the hole to catch rats, this method requires many people, is laborious and ineffective.

After searching online for the most effective way to catch mice, with little effort and without causing harm to the community, Mr. Nam chose to hunt mice using cage traps.

Every day, at 12 noon, he begins to survey the places to set traps. According to his experience, observing with the naked eye the fields with mouse footprints, the fields with small piles of soil pushed out, there will be many mice there. First, he clears the grass to create a path for the mice. Then he spreads out the cages at a pre-calculated distance, the way to place the cages also depends on each person's experience.

Mr. Nam said: “Field mice usually live in dense, wooded areas and only come out at night to look for food. On average, I set about 150 cage traps every day.

The work of setting traps starts at noon and ends when it is almost dark. After resting and eating, we go collect the traps that were set in the afternoon. Rats are very clever, so we have to create new traps every day. Each person has their own experience in hunting rats. We have to understand the characteristics of each type to have tips for catching rats.

In the rural areas of Nghe An, there are many people who hunt rats, but only about a dozen people consider it a profession to make a living like Mr. Cao Van Nam. Because this job is hard, regardless of sunny or rainy days, on cold winter days, his work of hunting field rats starts at noon and ends at midnight. He has to travel all night in the deserted fields around the area, even to Nghi Loc, Yen Thanh...

In return, the income from field mouse hunting is also quite stable. Accordingly, during the field mouse hunting season (lasting from August to the end of December of the lunar calendar), each day he hunts about 25-30 kg of live mice, selling them for 120,000 VND/kg of small mice as snake food, and 35,000-50,000 VND/kg of large, old mice.

On average, he earns 700,000 VND - 1 million VND per day, enough to cover his family's living expenses. "Whatever he catches, he sells immediately to the village purchasing agent, so he gets "cash" right away, so he doesn't have to worry about output," Mr. Nam shared.

Nowadays, field mouse meat has become a specialty, favored by some restaurants and pubs. Field mouse hunting has also developed, helping many people earn a good income and protecting crops from harmful mice. Thanks to mouse hunters like Mr. Nam, the fields are greener, and farmers are more assured when preparing for bumper crops.

Thanh Phuc