VietNamNet Bridge – This special market opens for a few hours, from 3pm to 6pm, and only from October through December, when field mice are fat and often hide in holes to avoid the cold.

Starting at 3pm every day, the market for field mice in Co Dung Commune of Kim Thanh District, Hai Duong province is very crowded. All 30 stalls in the market sell only one product: field mice, which have already been barbecued.

For local people, mouse meat has become a specialty, which is included in the menu for special guests. The most popular dishes processed from field mice are: boiled, roasted mouse meat, mouse meat stewed with glutinous rice and mouse meat processed as dog-meat.

The field mouse market is open only in the last three months of the year or the harvest and after-harvest time, when field mice eat enough rice to gain weight and like hiding from the cold weather in their holes.

The price for field mice is high, ranging from VND70,000 to VND120,000 ($3.5-$6) per kilo and sometimes VND140,000 ($7) per kilo.

Catching field mice has become an extra job of many people. A mouse catcher named Thi said he had caught 8-10kg of field mice a day, earning hundreds of thousand VND.

In the past month, taking advantage of leisure after harvest, Thi went to the field from 6am to 1pm to catch mice. Then he returned home to barbecue mice and take them to the market.

A field mouse hunter.

As the sources of field mice had been depleted, Thi said he had to go to the fields of other communes to find field mice.

Very proud of the unique market, Nguyen Danh Mau, Vice Chairman of Co Dung commune, said that this market has been organised for many decades. He said the sellers are honest and do not fake field mice by using black rats or sewer rats.

Mau said as field mice have become food, rice fields in his commune have no longer been destroyed by rats, and local people can earn extra money.

Linh Nhat