Mouse Madness Plagues Florida Towns

ORLANDO, Fla. —  Richard Hummel hung in there when the mice pillaged his home. He resisted for weeks with poison and sticky strips as the rodents overran his neighborhood and nearby businesses.

The 60-year-old waiter was catching 20 of them each day at his place. But finding two of the furry critters in his shower was more than he could stand.

“I give up. I’m moving,” Hummel groaned as he packed his trailer home in Apopka. “I’ve had to put everything I own--even my socks--in plastic containers. I’m not battling them anymore.”

For weeks, lightning-quick mice have invaded thousands of homes and businesses in a 50-square-mile area north of Orlando.

They sneak into buildings through openings smaller than a dime and eat holes in clothes, packages and paneling. They crawl up curtains, scurry across bare feet, unsuspecting sleepers, computers, hallways and roads. They gnaw through paper and wood, and feast on seeds at plant nurseries. They contaminate food. Droppings are everywhere.

Battle-weary residents in Zellwood, Plymouth and Apopka are sick of playing cat and mouse. They’ve been loading spring traps with peanut butter, putting down sticky glue strips, mouse bait and rat poison.

Even the cats aren’t interested anymore, bored and fat by too much of a good thing.

“We’ve got a healthy cat around here--but it’s tired of eating,” said Lt. Marvin Barrett of the Orange County Fire Department.

The infestation is in the shadows of the home of Walt Disney World. So far, only Mickey and Minnie have been spotted at the sprawling resort. The mouse problem is about 25 miles north of Orlando.

Health officials said they tested a sampling and found the creatures are not bearing disease. Exterminators have been overwhelmed with calls.

Angry residents said government agencies have been slow to control a state-made menace they blame on the restoration of Lake Apopka about a year ago.

The St. John’s Water Management District bought 14,000 acres of peat-rich soil for growing vegetables on the north side of the lake and flooded fields, creating wetlands to improve water quality.

When birds began dying at the lake, the fields were drained amid fears that chemical residue from the farms might be to blame. Once the farms were abandoned, vegetable-packing houses were no longer needed and were bulldozed.

Then came the mice.

“We not sure of the origin of the problem, but suspect it has something to do with the buyout of the farms--which the state did,” said Mel Martinez, chairman of the Orange County Commission. He said farmers managed to control the mouse population, and once they were gone, the mice flourished.

The county and state have committed $600,000 to help residents rid their homes of rodents. The money will pay for traps and poison to be handed out in the affected area, which is home to 40,000 people.

The mice breed every 23 or 24 days and have litters of six or more.

“Two mice become 15,000 mice in 12 months,” said Tom Stutzman, site production manager at Twyford Plant Laboratories in Apopka, who said he has been disposing of 130 mice a day. “I see little dead bodies all over the place.”

In Plymouth, Tim Landers is battling vermin at his nursery, Benchmark Foliage Inc. Some days he’s found just a handful of mice-- only to return days later and find 60.

“They’re in light fixtures. Open a door and they’re standing in the aisle ways; they’re on the desks, under cardboard. They’re into seed,” Landers said.

Sandy Kloster said she spent $77 to buy a Wal-Mart’s entire stock of sticky strips. Mice shorted out the electricity in her mobile home at Orange Blossom RV Park in Apopka.

“They shouldn’t be getting in a new, $50,000 sealed unit, and I caught 21 mice inside in one day,” she said. “First thing when I get up in the morning and last thing before bed, I empty traps. It’s disgusting.”