Plague rats being used to supply restaurants | NEWS.com.au
OK, so they ate the snakes and the owls that were eating the rats, so now they need to eat the rats? Do you remember the song about the old lady who swallowed a spider?

Live rats are being trucked from central China, suffering a plague of a reported two billion rodents displaced by a flooded lake, to the south of the of country to end up in restaurant dishes, Chinese media has reported...Local governments in Hunan have been grappling with the rats, which had already destroyed 1.6 million hectares of crops and could spread disease, according to media reports. A lack of snakes, also a popular dish in the south, and owls, a traditional Chinese medicine, was held partly responsible.