Word: mice
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...What act of mayhem did the farmer's wife commit on three mice...
...Kern County at last got out their plows and strewed deep furrows with poisoned grain. Then they got wheelbarrows, stacked the mouse corpses in pyres and the funeral smoke of myriad mice plumed the lowlands. They died, it was estimated, at the rate of 1,000 for every 75 feet of trench, per day. Gunfire and chlorine gas helped stem the tide but not for four days were the mice officially declared beaten...
...Whittington's cat, who rid an African kingdom of rats at one fell swoop, might have prevailed, but not the cats of Kern County. Rocking with glee, the newsgatherers told stories about cowardly cats fleeing to cover, proud cats ignoring such easy prey, big-hearted cats adopting families of mice. The ever-colorful New York World carried a report of one cat who added 16 mice to her litter of kittens. The World headline read: "Cats . . . Scorn Tons of Mice as Tabby Manna...
...Kern Countyites the mice were, however, no laughing matter. The invasion, which began a month ago, had devastated 100 square miles. Three big oil companies had dug 26 miles of trenches. Horticulture Commissioner Whit C. Barber of California estimated the total property damage...
...while they were about it, newsgatherers had not invented a Moses of Mousedom, leading his people to a promised land and handing down commandments nibbled upon a pebble. Or an Alexander, weeping mousily when there were no more ranches to conquer. Or some evidence that it had rained mice, or that the rodents were from Mars, or?since a mouse running from beneath a woman's skirt used to be regarded as a symbol of unchastity?that the mouse army was a portentous sign of the times...