Making a meal of mice

Cooked, salted or dried, field mice strung on sticks are sold as a popular delicacy in Malawi markets and roadside stalls. The mice are hunted in corn fields after the harvest when they have grown plump on a diet of grains, fruits, grass and the odd insect. The most widely eaten species is known locally as Kapuku, gray in colour and with a shorter tail than the more common rat. Young boys have to be quick as they chase the mice through the fields and catch them. But local villagers have also come up with an innovative trap.