Mice fill buckets
on Molokai

The explosion in the mouse
population has them eating
crops, feed and seedlings

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By Leila Fujimori
lfujimori@starbulletin.com

Mice have invaded parts of Molokai in biblical proportions this summer, and residents are catching them by the bucketful -- literally.

Firefighter Travis Tancayo said he's caught more than 70 mice in one night in four mechanical traps, each with a capacity of 30, outside his home in Hoolehua, and has seen a dramatic increase within the last three days. He and fellow firefighters swap advice on how to catch the little varmints; most use five-gallon buckets that often fill up with rodents.

"We watched hundreds of mice perched all over the sacks of feed," said Joan Lasua, who sat in a feed store warehouse near Tancayo's house for a meeting one night in Hoolehua, a dry area of farms and ranch land. "They're running all over the road, and you're just running all over them."

Last week, the state Health Department advised the public to take measures against field mice, which have increased fourfold in parts of Maui, the Big Island and Kauai.

Mice transmit diseases such as murine typhus. There have been six cases of typhus reported so far this year while the average number of cases is five.

Dry weather has depleted their food supply in pasturelands and grassy areas, causing the mice to move into residential areas for food, a Department of Health spokeswoman said.

Molokai residents say they can't recall this many mice in decades. Tancayo's father, Henry, who has lived on his Hoolehua ranch for more than 40 years, estimates he's caught more than a thousand mice in the past month.

"This is the first time I've seen this much," he said.

Tancayo competes with his father, who lives next door, to see who can catch more mice. They've noticed the problem for about a month now.

One night, Henry saw something hopping in the grass.

"I thought, 'What is this, frogs?' No, mice," he said.

Henry said the mice are so hungry, they've been gnawing through thick plastic containers to get to the animal feed.

"The things come in waves," Henry said. "We got mice all over the place. They're running up the screen." He was seeing 30 to 40 a night; now it's 60.

Travis Tancayo recalls a similar plague of mice in the 1970s.

Lasua has lived on Molokai for nearly 20 years. She has heard stories that in the early 1980s a plague of mice occurred with a similar weather pattern to the recent one: a four-year drought was followed by winter rain, and then a profusion of mice.

Lasua works as an office manager for Hawaiian Research, which grows corn seed, and said the mice have been eating the crop.

Farmers also complain the mice are eating their watermelon seedlings, Tancayo said.

With five cats, however, Lasua has never had problems inside her home.

Henry Tancayo said neighbors with cats, geese and ducks don't have severe mouse problems.

Most people use a homemade contraption: They string a wire through a short piece of PVC pipe across a five-gallon bucket and bury it with the top at ground level, Travis Tancayo said.

The pipe spins around the wire, and when it is topped with peanut butter, mice are attracted and try to get to it, he said, but they fall into the bucket and cannot get out.