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Attack of the killer mice

MICE may look cute, but their habits can be somewhat unpleasant. Novice mouse-handlers are often horrified to find that their furry charges have set upon and eaten – or just terminally nibbled – one of their cage-mates. That is probably what happened to the three mice that went missing last month from the Public Health Research Institute, a venerable research laboratory in New Jersey. However, horror of horrors, the mice in question were infected with Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes bubonic plague, so newspapers were soon full of scare stories about “plague mice” loose in…