COFFEE BREAK
8B — THE OBSERVER & BAKER CITY HERALD
THuRSDAY, JunE 3, 2021
Husband reveals a frighteningly short fuse
that he would kill the dog. He
then turned on me, yelling and
breaking things.
I’ve never seen him this angry,
and I am afraid it’s escalating and
he will physically harm the dog
or me. Is it time to leave? He’s
no longer the man I married. —
Fearful in Texas
Dear Fearful: What you are
describing is not normal behavior.
Contact your doctor about the
drastic change in your husband’s
personality because it could be
symptomatic of a serious illness.
After that, the next time he pres-
ents a physical danger, call the
police and ensure your safety by
leaving. And if you do, take your
rescue dog with you.
Dear Abby: I am about to
start my new college experience,
DEAR
ABBY
ADVICE
Dear Abby: My husband
and I have been together 23
years. A few years ago, he told
a friend of his he wasn’t in love
with or attracted to me. I’m the
same 5-foot-6-inch, 135-pound
woman he married. Recently,
he has become increasingly
short-tempered.
He gets angry at every driver
on the road, he destroyed the
vacuum when it stopped working
and recently went after our
10-pound rescue dog for peeing
when he yelled at him. I inter-
vened when he started screaming
open and honest with them about
your desire for neatness and tidi-
ness. They may not be as partic-
ular as you are, but it will pro-
vide you the opportunity to live
with different kinds of people.
As to the peace and quiet you
crave, if adapting to each other’s
schedules isn’t possible, consider
heading to the library to find the
peace and quiet you need. I wish
you luck.
Dear Abby: I am retired, so
I have free time on my hands.
Recently, while doing a favor for
a neighbor couple, I was standing
on their porch when a board
broke and one of my legs went
through up to my thigh. They
expressed concern at the time,
and I told them I thought I was
OK.
but I have a few concerns. I’m
very picky, and I enjoy my alone
time. I like to keep my space
clean and tidy, and I’m afraid my
roommate(s) will be slobs and I’ll
end up cleaning up after them.
I also need alone time so I can
focus on myself to recoup after a
long day. When I’m here at home
I will usually do that in my bed-
room. But if I have roommates,
that will be difficult to do. I guess
I’m asking how to find a happy
medium so my roommates and
I can be at peace at all times. —
Wants To Prepare
Dear Wants: Because you
didn’t specify how many room-
mates you will be sharing your
space with, I will assume there
are more than one — which may
place you in the minority. Be
The next day, my knee and
upper thigh were swollen and
bruised. My leg is improving
each day, and for that I’m
thankful. This happened more
than two weeks ago, and I have
not gotten a phone call or any-
thing else from these neighbors.
Have people really gotten that
insensitive, or am I making a
big deal out of nothing? — Old
School in Georgia
Dear Old School: No, you
are not making a big deal out of
nothing. And yes, some people
have become that insensitive. The
reason for your neighbors’ silence
may be lack of empathy, or it
could be fear of a lawsuit. Or they
may have thought it was unneces-
sary to check further because you
said you were OK.
NEWS OF THE WEIRD
Plague of ravenous, destructive mice tormenting Australians
The Associated Press
BOGAN GATE, Australia
— At night, the floors of sheds
vanish beneath carpets of scam-
pering mice. Ceilings come alive
with the sounds of scratching. One
family blamed mice chewing elec-
trical wires for their house burning
down.
Vast tracts of land in Australia’s
New South Wales state are being
threatened by a mouse plague that
the state government describes as
“absolutely unprecedented.” Just
how many millions of rodents have
infested the agricultural plains
across the state is guesswork.
“We’re at a critical point now
where if we don’t significantly
reduce the number of mice that are
in plague proportions by spring,
we are facing an absolute eco-
nomic and social crisis in rural and
regional New South Wales,” Agri-
culture Minister Adam Marshall
said this month.
Bruce Barnes said he is taking
a gamble by planting crops on his
family farm near the central New
South Wales town of Bogan Gate.
“We just sow and hope,” he
said.
The risk is that the mice will
maintain their numbers through
the Southern Hemisphere winter
and devour the wheat, barley and
canola before it can be harvested.
NSW Farmers, the state’s top
agricultural association, predicts
the plague will wipe more than
$775 million from the value of the
winter crop.
The state government has
ordered 1,320 gallons of the
banned poison Bromadiolone
from India. The federal govern-
ment regulator has yet to approve
emergency applications to use the
poison on the perimeters of crops.
Rick Rycroft/The Associated Press
Mice scurry around stored grain on a farm near Tottenham, Australia, on May 19, 2021. Vast tracts of land in Australia’s New
South Wales state are being threatened by a mouse plague the state government describes as “absolutely unprecedented.”
Just how many millions of rodents have infested the agricultural plains across the state is guesswork.
Critics fear the poison will kill not
only mice but also animals that
feed on them. including wedge-tail
eagles and family pets.
“We’re having to go down this
path because we need something
that is super strength, the equiv-
alent of napalm to just blast these
mice into oblivion,” Marshall said.
The plague is a cruel blow to
farmers in Australia’s most pop-
ulous state who have been bat-
tered by fires, floods and pan-
demic disruptions in recent years,
only to face the new scourge of the
introduced house mouse, or Mus
musculus.
The same government-commis-
sioned advisers who have helped
farmers cope with the drought, fire
weather
| Go to AccuWeather.com
and floods are returning to help
people deal with the stresses of
mice.
The worst comes after dark,
when millions of mice that had
been hiding and dormant during
the day become active.
By day, the crisis is less
apparent. Patches of road are
dotted with squashed mice from
the previous night, but birds soon
take the carcasses away. Haystacks
are disintegrating due to ravenous
rodents that have burrowed deep
inside. Upending a sheet of scrap
metal lying in a paddock will send
a dozen mice scurrying. The side-
walks are strewn with dead mice
that have eaten poisonous bait.
But a constant, both day and
night, is the stench of mice urine
and decaying flesh. The smell is
people’s greatest gripe.
“You deal with it all day. You’re
out baiting, trying your best to
manage the situation, then come
home and just the stench of dead
mice,” said Jason Conn, a fifth
generation farmer near Wellington
in central New South Wales.
“They’re in the roof cavity of
your house. If your house is not
well sealed, they’re in bed with
you. People are getting bitten in
bed,” Conn said. “It doesn’t relent,
that’s for sure.”
Colin Tink estimated he
drowned 7,500 mice in a single
night last week in a trap he set
with a cattle feeding bowl full of
AROUND OREGON AND THE REGION
Astoria
Longview
49/62
Kennewick
48/72
St. Helens
50/77
56/78
61/83
52/77
47/77
Condon
FRI
SAT
SUN
MON
Mainly clear
and mild
Mostly sunny
and warm
Sunny and
cooler
Abundant
sunshine
Partly sunny
73 38
74 39
69 38
Eugene
10
10
9
49/79
70 42
69 41
67 42
10
10
9
La Grande
57 84 50
Comfort Index™
Enterprise
6
4
6
52 83 47
Comfort Index™
4
64 40
10
10
10
6
ALMANAC
TUESDAY EXTREMES
TEMPERATURES Baker City La Grande Elgin
NATION (for the 48 contiguous states)
High Tuesday
Low Tuesday
High: 115°
Low: 21°
Wettest: 2.37”
86°
42°
89°
45°
96°
46°
PRECIPITATION (inches)
Tuesday
Month to date
Normal month to date
Year to date
Normal year to date
0.00
0.00
0.05
2.23
4.58
0.00
0.00
0.06
5.90
7.86
0.00
0.00
0.07
14.21
11.99
AGRICULTURAL INFO.
HAY INFORMATION FRIDAY
Lowest relative humidity
Afternoon wind
Hours of sunshine
Evapotranspiration
25%
NW at 7 to 14 mph
5.6
0.27
RESERVOIR STORAGE (through midnight Wednesday)
Phillips Reservoir
Unity Reservoir
Owyhee Reservoir
McKay Reservoir
Wallowa Lake
Thief Valley Reservoir
17% of capacity
88% of capacity
49% of capacity
97% of capacity
55% of capacity
88% of capacity
STREAM FLOWS (through midnight Tuesday)
5690 cfs
Grande Ronde at Troy
Thief Valley Reservoir near North Powder
93 cfs
Burnt River near Unity
120 cfs
Umatilla River near Gibbon
179 cfs
Minam River at Minam
2210 cfs
Powder River near Richland
27 cfs
Death Valley, Calif.
Burgess Junction, Wyo.
McAllen, Texas
OREGON
High: 103°
Low: 40°
Wettest: none
The Dalles
Meacham
Charlotte, N.C., was swamped by 3.78
inches of rain on June 3, 1909 -- the great-
est amount recorded there in one day for
decades. The storm represented almost a
month’s worth of rain for Charlotte.
SUN & MOON
THU.
5:07 a.m.
8:35 p.m.
2:23 a.m.
2:00 p.m.
FRI.
5:06 a.m.
8:36 p.m.
2:42 a.m.
3:03 p.m.
MOON PHASES
New
Jun 10
First
Jun 17
Full
Jun 24
Beaver Marsh
51/72
53/82
Silver Lake
Last
Jul 1
Jordan Valley
56/89
Paisley
54/90
51/81
Frenchglen
56/92
Medford
City
Astoria
Bend
Boise
Brookings
Burns
Coos Bay
Corvallis
Council
Elgin
Eugene
Hermiston
Hood River
Imnaha
John Day
Joseph
Kennewick
Klamath Falls
Lakeview
SAT.
Hi/Lo/W
62/51/pc
86/49/pc
95/63/s
66/49/pc
90/47/s
63/46/pc
78/46/pc
91/52/s
83/47/s
79/48/pc
89/60/s
78/56/s
85/49/s
85/46/s
83/47/s
94/59/s
87/44/pc
88/47/pc
Hi/Lo/W
60/48/sh
72/40/s
85/50/s
65/47/s
78/38/s
61/44/pc
68/44/c
79/43/s
68/38/s
71/44/c
75/51/s
68/50/c
76/43/s
75/41/s
69/37/s
78/51/s
77/41/s
80/41/pc
Grand View
Arock
69/98
62/94
60/94
Klamath Falls
50/87
Lakeview
51/88
McDermitt
Shown is Friday’s weather. Temperatures are Thursday night’s lows and Friday’s highs.
FRI.
Diamond
55/90
Fields
59/90
50/66
Boise
67/95
55/90
Brookings
59/94
49/86
Chiloquin
Grants Pass
Juntura
56/90
49/81
45/80
Roseburg
Ontario
73/99
Burns
Brothers
52/76
Coos Bay
Powers
53/86
Oakridge
Huntington
51/83
Bend
Elkton
63/91
75/94
Seneca
59/92
RECREATION FORECAST FRIDAY
REGIONAL CITIES
WEATHER HISTORY
Sunrise
Sunset
Moonrise
Moonset
Florence
Council
55/84
56/85
52/83
48/63
Comfort Index takes into account how the weather will feel based on a combination of factors. A rating of 10 feels
very comfortable while a rating of 0 feels very uncomfortable.
52/81
John Day
52/86
Sisters
48/77
69 40
57/89
Baker City
Redmond
49/62
Halfway
Granite
47/78
Newport
46/58
68 38
54/85
51/74
51/79
Corvallis
Enterprise
52/83
57/84
Monument
56/85
Idanha
Salem
TONIGHT
4
Elgin
53/83
La Grande
55/78
Maupin
Comfort Index™
64/88
Pendleton
The Dalles
Portland
Newberg
Lewiston
65/92
Hood River
59/87
TIllamook
55 84 48
Forecasts and graphics provided
by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2021
Walla Walla
65/94
Vancouver
50/74
44/64
Baker City
water at his farm outside Dubbo.
“I thought I might get a couple
of hundred. I didn’t think I’d get
7,500,” Tink said.
Barnes said mouse carcasses
and excrement in roofs were pol-
luting farmers’ water tanks.
“People are getting sick from
the water,” he said.
The mice are already in Barnes’
hay bales. He’s battling them
with zinc phosphide baits, the
only legal chemical control for
mice used in broad-scale agricul-
ture in Australia. He’s hoping that
winter frosts will help contain the
numbers.
Farmers like Barnes endured
four lean years of drought before
2020 brought a good season as
well as the worst flooding that
some parts of New South Wales
have seen in at least 50 years.
But the pandemic brought a labor
drought. Fruit was left to rot on
trees because foreign backpackers
who provide the seasonal work-
force were absent.
Plagues seemingly appear from
nowhere and often vanish just as
fast.
Disease and a shortage of food
are thought to trigger a dramatic
population crash as mice feed on
themselves, devouring the sick,
weak and their own offspring.
Government researcher Steve
Henry, whose agency is devel-
oping strategies to reduce the
impact of mice on agriculture,
said it is too early to predict what
damage will occur by spring.
He travels across the state
holding community meetings,
sometimes twice a day, to discuss
the mice problem.
“People are fatigued from
dealing with the mice,” Henry
said.
City
Lewiston
Longview
Meacham
Medford
Newport
Olympia
Ontario
Pasco
Pendleton
Portland
Powers
Redmond
Roseburg
Salem
Spokane
The Dalles
Ukiah
Walla Walla
FRI.
SAT.
Hi/Lo/W
92/56/s
72/51/pc
81/48/s
90/53/pc
58/48/pc
69/50/pc
99/64/s
91/56/s
87/53/s
77/53/pc
72/49/pc
86/45/s
82/49/pc
79/51/pc
83/54/s
83/56/s
81/40/s
88/56/s
Hi/Lo/W
77/50/s
63/46/c
68/39/s
81/49/s
56/46/c
62/44/pc
87/53/s
79/48/s
71/47/s
66/49/c
68/45/pc
72/37/s
73/47/c
68/47/c
69/44/s
72/51/pc
65/36/s
73/50/s
Weather(W): s-sunny, pc-partly cloudy, c-cloudy, sh-showers, t-thunderstorms, r-rain,
sf-snow fl urries, sn-snow, i-ice
ANTHONY LAKES
PHILLIPS LAKE
Mostly sunny
Very warm
60
41
83
47
MT. EMILY REC.
BROWNLEE RES.
Mostly sunny; nice
Mostly sunny
70
47
92
55
EAGLE CAP WILD.
EMIGRANT ST. PARK
Mostly sunny; mild
Mostly sunny; warm
68
37
76
40
WALLOWA LAKE
MCKAY RESERVOIR
Very warm
Mostly sunny; warm
83
47
86
51
THIEF VALLEY RES.
RED BRIDGE ST. PARK
Mostly sunny; warm
Mostly sunny; warm
84
48
84
50