Mice in walls, food stores, even beds – Australia’s mouse plague is driving some towns to desperation

Australia’s mouse plague: mice caught in grain grower Geoff Cosgrove’s ceiling one night. Photograph: Geoff Cosgrove

There is a smell that settles over a town in the middle of a mouse plague.

It clings to supermarket milk cartons and lingers in school classrooms. It thickens the air and follows people home.