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Robert Olley Artwork

Coal Mining Prints - Ravenous Rodents

Coal Mining Prints - Ravenous Rodents

Regular price £35.00 GBP
Regular price Sale price £35.00 GBP
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38 x 28cm signed print

"Whitburn Colliery closed 1968 and I was kept on to form a small team of salvage workers whose task was to retrieve the more valuable items from the pit, ie electric motors and panels, coal cutting machines and roof supports.  As the pumps were switched off and brought to the surface, the districts began to flood.  Millions of mice, now starving, their food source of discarded bait scraps gone, began to migrate ahead of the rising water towards the shaft bottom.  After a month or so we salvage men had to walk around eating our bait, if you sat down you would be attacked by hungry, desperate rodents.  One salvage worker who had hung his water bottle and jacket from a girder with a length of shotfires wire leaving his wrapped bait in one of his pockets.  At bait time, not noticing that the bottle and coat had became slightly animated, reached for his water bottle and was instantly overwhelmed by dozens of starving mice." - Bob Olley

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