Rats by the thousand swarmed the Nelson district in the latter part of 1884, disrupting daily life for residents, businesses and farms alike.
Domestic cats had a field day, often carrying dead rodents home and depositing them on doorsteps. One householder reported disposing of about 50 rats from his doorstep in a single day.
As the plague intensified, dogs, particularly terriers, were used to kill the rats, while children went out after school to catch and dispose of them. Despite these efforts, numbers remained stubbornly high. By mid-October, a count of 4,000 trapped rats had been recorded.
No one was left unaffected. Vermin destroyed crops of oats and rooted through potatoes still in the ground. Wheat was poisoned and laid out in the hope the rodents would eat it.
Even along the shores of the district and at the Boulder Bank, rats were seen swimming to and fro. One old settler in the Murchison area believed the plague was a forerunner to a major flood, recalling that another rat plague had occurred shortly before the floods of 1877.
The Waimea Plains were particularly hard hit, with huge numbers of rats found both alive and dead. Where they had come from remained a mystery, but an odd feature of the plague was that nearly all were the same size. They appeared partly grown, were different in shape from the common brown rat and were paler in colour.
Despite the widespread use of cats, dogs, traps and poison, the numbers continued to increase.
In Waimea, vast numbers were killed each week on almost every homestead without any reduction. One settler remarked that swarms appeared to attend the funeral of every rat killed. This man trapped nightly for several weeks, averaging about four rats a night in his bedroom alone, not including those caught by the family cat.
Rats also contaminated water supplies. With rodents getting into wells, many became unusable for drinking. One neighbour found his well teeming with rats, apparently swimming in the water. When he poked a long pole down to kill some, they simply jumped onto the stick and climbed up to escape.
Another recorded account tells of a rat that somehow ended up in the kettle of an elderly couple. The old gentleman, almost blind, had not noticed. When a younger family member visited and went to put the kettle on, they found a well-boiled rat at the bottom.
It was also recorded that one farmer buried 120 rats in a single day after his sons caught them among the straw stacks. Notices were issued urging settlers to examine and clean out wells and to cremate dead rats to prevent the spread of disease.
Settlers endured the rat nuisance for several months before numbers finally declined and the plague came to an end.
