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Sato Aya
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Mice live everywhere in the world. Since old times they appear as heroes
of childrenfs tales and in all kinds of novels. Vietnam is not an exception.
There are three kinds of mice in Vietnam: those living in the ditches that
run around restaurants and hotel kitchen; those living in ordinary houses
and running through the ceilings. I still remember that during my long
stay in Vietnam I spent three nights with a small mouse that lived in my
room.
Anyhow, there is another kind of mice that live in warehouses of rice.
In rural areas they live in the rice fields and eat only rice. This type
is also eatable and some restaurants specialize in dishes of mice broiled
in soy. I tried once and it was delicious. Since Vietnam is an agricultural
country they are quite spread but snakes eat them keeping a natural balance.
There are also places where farmers rear cats to get rid of so many mice
that quite often damage the harvest of rice. But people say that snakes
and cats have disappeared from the rural areas.
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China, the neighbor of Vietnam, uses snakes as well as cats for medicine
production and food. They are much in demand and the Chinese pay good price
for them. As a result, there is a black market trade going on in both countries.
The disappearance of snakes and cats from the Vietnamese rural areas produces
serious natural disasters and from time to time Vietnamese newspapers report
in big block letters: gCats have disappeared from Vietnamfs rural areash.
Naturally, the mice are very happy about it.
Last year, a few leaders from rural areas of Central Vietnam made a request
to the visiting team of Japa Vietnam for 1600 cats to fight the mice infesting
their fields. The idea was to distribute 1 cat per family. Japa Vietnam
asked the advice of various Vietnamese knowledgeable persons. Back in Japan
we discussed the matter and the final conclusion was that we were not able
to cooperate on that. We were also afraid that maybe next year the cats
would multiply so much that we will be asked to fund a program for dogs
to get rid of the catsc
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