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Getting rid of one pest can give rise to other problems.

A Bangladeshi farmer, Mokhairul Islam, has won a colour television as the prize for being the nation’s most successful catcher of rats.

The country which suffers annual catastrophes like none other, reckons that it loses 10% of it’s agricultural output to rats every year, so there is an annual competition to get rid of as many rodents as possible. This year Mr Islam’s tally was an unbelievable 83,450 verified rats. We’re left to wonder how much actual farming he did during the rat catching season.

Bangladesh of course cannot afford to lose any percentage of its crop let alone 10%. An invasion of rats around the Chittagong area last year left villagers at starvation level, requiring food to be distributed by the UN’s Food Programme.

However we need to think this one through before we all head off to compete in next year’s competition for a colour TV. Rats may well be vile, disease-spreading, crop destroying vermin, but what happens when humans tamper with  nature by taking out one of the levels along the food chain?

The country is home to rather a lot of snakes who depend on rats for food. Now I’m no friend of snakes and have no real concern for where their next meal is going to come from, but if there are no rats what will their second choice be? In rural, farming areas hungry cobras and pythons may well develop a taste for small livestock like chickens and goats. Some may even be driven closer to human habitation than they would normally venture and decide to sample the odd farmer or two.

The grand total of rats caught this season was 6.5 million – that’s a lot of hunger-enraged snakes.