大象传媒

There is one animal Bill Oddie expected to be here on St Kilda, considering that there are boats coming in and out all the time - and that is the rat. But in fact there aren't any here, which is good because rats can cause absolute havoc among sea bird colonies. Nevertheless, there is one related rodent that is here: the St Kildan field mouse. In fact, it's a descendent of mice that were probably brought in, no doubt unwittingly by the Vikings, Back when there were people living here, St Kilda had two special mice because there was also the St Kildan house mouse. But when the people moved out in the 1930s I'm afraid the house mouse - which relied so much on the grain and the scraps put out - was soon ousted by the field mouse, which is rather bigger and more robust and will eat just about anything. So no more St Kildan house mouse but we do have this little chap.