That's exactly the situation Shara Mooney and her co-workers at Mullion Produce Pets & Saddlery find themselves in as they not only sell pet mice, but pet rats as well.

"You get the comments of 'I've got 600 in the shed, I'll come and bring them in for you', so we get little comments here or there because people just don't like them," Ms Mooney said.

"But we have specifically bred mice that are just for pets.

"We breed our own between our domesticated mice and rats so that we don't get any unwanted diseases in them. But we don't breed until we have an influx of people wanting them, because we're not going to force animals to breed if there's no point.

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"So we just leave them to their own just to hang out in their own enclosures until people start wanting them again and then we'll start breeding them again."

Currently at the store there are about eight mice and eight rats for sale.

Ms Mooney explained that what they sell are a lot different to the field mice plaguing communities.

"They look pretty different to your normal field mice," she said.

"So there is a difference in appearance, not just coloration but their facial features are different and it's the same with field rats, they just look different to your typical domesticated rat."

Although they haven't seen a swing in sales up or down since news of the mice plague started, she said there can be some dry times.

"There are times when we might not sell any for a month," she added.

"People who do buy them pretty much just want something well handled.

"Rats more so can be a mix of cat and dogs and be pretty sociable.

"Mice are pretty reserved, but people do come in and get the male mice and male rats because they are a bit more social.

"I guess most of the time it's people wanting something cute."

In some relief however, the mice plague has experienced somewhat of a lull around the Central West due to the cold weather.